Arkansas Times - March 31, 2016

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SIPC

COMMENT

On drug testing Gov. Hutchinson has implemented a statewide mandatory drug test for every new applicant for a welfare program known as TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families).

The original bill, SB 600, was created and sponsored by 39 Arkansas senators and representatives, all but two of which were Republicans, and seven of which were members of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). ALEC is a notorious corporate bill mill that gives newly elected Republican legislators a free family vacation at selected resorts in exchange for sponsoring its cookiecutter bills that favor corporate interests at the expense of taxpayers.

In a 2014 Time article, Darlenam Cunha wrote: “The [drug] testing is meant to assure taxpayers their money isn’t being ‘wasted’ on the less desirable, those who would somehow manage to buy drugs with the assistance.

But in Tennessee, where drug testing was enacted for welfare recipients last month (July 2014), only one person in the 800 who applied for help tested positive. In Florida, during the four months the state tested for drug use, only 2.6 percent of applicants tested positive.

Meanwhile, Florida has an illegal drug use rate of 8 percent, meaning far fewer people on services are using drugs than their better-off counterparts. The drug testing cost taxpayers more money than it saved, and was ruled unconstitutional last year.”

In 2013, the U.S. District Court in Orlando struck down the Florida welfare drug-testing law as a violation of the Fourth Amendment right to protection against unreasonable searches.

For anyone who hasn’t realized it yet, let me reiterate: The Republicans are the party of the very wealthy and big corporate interests, and this law testifies once again to their well-organized and well-funded class warfare against the poor and disenfranchised.

I urge any TANF applicant who is denied access to this program for refusing to answer drug-related questions to contact the Arkansas ACLU and consider filing suit against Blake Johnson, the bill’s sponsor, Gov. Hutchinson and/ or the state of Arkansas.

Brad Bailey Fayetteville The state’s other newspaper announced the Department of Workforce Services’ launching of a drug-testing program for welfare recipients in Arkansas. The new law requires that 4

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

funds bypass heads of households who test positive for drugs and then fail to meet the requirements of rehabilitation, all in an effort to keep aid from being spent on drugs. According to the legislation’s co-sponsor, Rep. Robin Lundstrum, (R-Springdale), the goal is not to keep the “truly needy” from receiving assistance, but to stop aid from being paid directly to drug users. Lundstrum was quoted, “I want to see that money gets into the hands of the truly needy, get it to those kids, whoever is in charge needs to be drug free.”

I agree with Lundstrum. Public assis-

tance meant to help those in need should not be used to support a self-destructive habit. I applaud Lundstrum and other Republicans who do not simply promote the cessation of all public assistance. This shows that some of our current Republican leaders possess at least some measurable level of compassion, an attribute seemingly in short supply among today’s conservatives.

While this all sounds good, there is a bigger picture to consider. The provisions of the new law allow tax revenue to be spent on identifying and labeling drug users, while simultaneously deny-

ing benefits that help the user pay for assistance in overcoming their addiction.

So, once again we see modern day rightwing thinking at work. Spend money on identifying, labeling and punishing, but not on helping everyone who is in need.

Lundstrum and her supporters want to help the children of those who may be addicted to drugs, but they also want to punish their parents. This proves that many conservatives refuse to see drug addiction for what it is: a sickness. For whatever reason, many on the political right are determined to keep drug dependence within the realm of criminal activity, as opposed to seeing it as a public health issue requiring understanding and compassion.

Another question comes to mind.

What happens when the head of the household’s failure to adhere to the stipulations of the new law results in eventual incarceration and the state must step in and assume the cost of caring for the children? Now we have a scenario where tax money is being spent on prosecuting and warehousing the drug-using head of the house, and providing care for the children through foster parenting and all the public services that typically accompany this approach. This is a far more costly route than simply trying to help the sick individual overcome their addiction in the first place. Again, this shows the conservative propensity to care more about punishment than compassion.

Richard Hutson Cabot

Bob Jones and Asa I read Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s biography that was online prior to the election.

I noted that it omitted his time at Bob Jones University and that of his wife and brother. The school website is boastful of them as graduates.

I regard that as deceptive and an indicator of character weakness. It is well known that BJU taught racism, homophobia and was disparaging of women and their autonomy. Women who were raped were counseled that it was their fault because underlying sin in their lives brought it upon them. That they should ask their rapists for forgiveness!

My point: If Asa refuses to publicly admit marinating in such tripe and doesn’t renounce its teachings, we citizens have reason to believe he still holds those values. Backing legislation by those of his party that codifies such garbage into law would indicate he still holds such values. Allowing such tripe to become law without his signature would seem to

indicate he agrees with it or fears the tea party and fundamentalists among them.

How should we regard him for that?

Asa is catering to Obama haters in changing the private option. He obviously had that intent while campaigning, but refused to say as much. The refusal to release the budget before election would have revealed his present efforts and that he feared the tea party.

We need some answers as to why Asa hid his BJU background and up-front admittance of adherence to its mess or renounce it publicly.

Karl Hansen Hensley

Balancing act It warms the cockles of my heart to witness the exquisite balance that the Arkansas Times’ writers strike between objectivity and bias. Of course, no one expects perfection from this gang, with the possible exception of Gene Lyons, whose yeoman efforts to canonize Bill Clinton continue apace and could bring him a Pulitzer Prize, perhaps after the current committee takes pity on him or dies.

Joe Anderson Cotton Plant

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MARCH 31, 2016

5

EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week: “I think he could be the commander in chief.”

— Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas last Friday after meeting with Donald Trump, whom Cotton declared to be a “more serious leader” than Hillary Clinton on foreign policy matters. Meanwhile, Trump, in a weekend interview with the New York Times, said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is “obsolete” and he would not rule out the possibility of using nuclear weapons against ISIS.

The Little Rock School District can proceed with plans to open a new middle school in West Little Rock, a federal judge ruled last week. U.S. District Judge Price Marshall denied a request for an injunction from a group of plaintiffs led by veteran civil rights attorney Rep. John Walker (D-Little Rock). Walker argued that by adding a new campus in a mostly white and affluent area of town, the LRSD was effectively declaring that project a higher priority than facilities needs in majority-black neighborhoods. The plans for the new school therefore indicated ongoing racial bias in the district, Walker said, and should be halted.

After a two-day hearing, Marshall sided with LRSD Superintendent Baker Kurrus, noting that the LRSD expects the new middle school to be 40 percent white, 40 percent black and 20 percent other races. Marshall said he was hopeful Kurrus’ leadership could lead to “a new birth” for the district. Yet to be resolved are two other issues raised by the plaintiffs: a request for an injunction to stop the expansion of charter schools in the city, and a request for a reversal of the state’s takeover of the LRSD in January 2015.

The unworthy poor A memo that was circulated last week revealed that Gov. Hutchinson’s administration has expanded 6

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ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

Full steam ahead on WLR school

TAKE A LOAD OFF: At the corner of B Street and Pierce in Little Rock.

a program that screens welfare beneficiaries for drug use. A 2015 state law authorized a pilot program in certain counties to screen recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and drug test those who indicate they’ve used illegal substances; the Hutchinson administration has instead decided on a statewide rollout for all 3,000 or so TANF beneficiaries in Arkansas. If the record from other states is any indication, the program will be all but useless: A similar law in Mississippi referred about 38 TANF applicants for drug testing, out of 3,656 screened. Of those 38, two tested positive.

Maggio gets the maximum Last week, disgraced Conway Circuit Judge Mike Maggio was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his

acceptance of a bribe. In 2013, Maggio reduced the damages a jury awarded the family of a woman who died in a nursing home due to neglect, from $5.2 million to $1 million. As Maggio later admitted in a plea deal with federal prosecutors, he also accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Michael Morton, the owner of the nursing home in question, to help fund his race for the state Court of Appeals. (Morton has not been charged with a crime, as of yet.)

At Maggio’s sentencing last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Brian Miller departed from sentencing guidelines to give the former state judge the maximum allowable prison time under law, 120 months. “I put drug dealers in prison for five, 10, 20 years for standing on a corner selling crack cocaine,” Miller said from the bench.

“What’s worse: A drug dealer on the corner or a dirty judge? A dirty judge is far more harmful to society than a

dope dealer.” Maggio’s lawyer said he expects to appeal.

Ethics with teeth Little Rock lawyer David Couch submitted to the state attorney general’s office a proposed constitutional amendment to strengthen state laws on campaign finance and lobbying, something desperately needed in Arkansas. Among other things, the measure would end corporate contributions to political action committees (PACs), stop lobbyist gifts and freebies for elected officials, enhance penalties for ethics violations, and shine light on “dark money” spent by independent groups to buy “educational” ads during election season (think the vast sums spent on the state Supreme Court races last month by secretive out-of-state organizations). Still, the amendment must clear a number of hurdles before appearing before voters in November.

OPINION

Beware that word ‘reform’

B

eware legislators bearing gifts of “reform.”

Last week I wrote about judicial “reform.” I’m open to a means of judicial selection other than election, which is prone to undue influence by nefarious secret money. But is the Arkansas legislature up to the job? Based on the record, no.

Consider ethics “reform.” Some wellmeaning private citizens promoted stronger ethics legislation to the point that the Arkansas legislature put an amendment on the ballot in 2014. But by the time legislators had fiddled with the proposed constitutional amendment and then gamed the enabling legislation, the result was a hollow gesture.

Voters had opened the door to longer term limits. They had provided a tool to almost triple legislative pay. They did little to reduce excessive expense account claims. Legislative amendments made things worse. They provided loopholes to avoid the prohibition on wining and dining of legislators by lobbyists. The amendment also did nothing to stop leg-

islators from hitting the revolving door at the Capitol to “consultant” jobs that, if not technically lobbying, were MAX indistinguishable.

BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com Last week, Michael Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette went through the annual (and laughably limited) personal financial disclosure statements of state legislators and found many of them had taken free junkets last year to places like France, China, Israel, Florida and Colorado.

The ethics “reform” law prohibits lobbyist-paid trips. But legislators allowed themselves free trips to “educational” meetings of national groups. The result: Putative nonprofits (some aligned with special interest political lobbies) provide the freebies.

Right-wing and corporate viewpoints predominate on the meeting agendas.

Legislators got a Florida trip from an outfit that pioneered the law to drug-test welfare recipients. Other legislators were

Wages up, jobs too

S

omeone should write a book: Why does the real world routinely foil the great economic prescriptions of politicians and their parties?

Take the little matter of Arkansas’s dramatic plunge in unemployment in the first two months of 2016, to near the full-employment level of 4 percent. Actually, it’s not such a “little matter” since Arkansas mirrors what has happened on a broader scale.

You may not have remembered, although every Arkansas employer did, that Arkansas’s minimum wage shot up to $8 an hour on Jan. 1. Voters approved an initiative in 2014 that raised the bottom pay in Arkansas from $6.25 to $7.50 on Jan. 1, 2015, and then to $8 this January, and it will rise to $8.50 nine months from now. But the state’s unemployment rate, instead of soaring after the wage hike last year, actually fell, and it plunged sharply again after the pay threshold went up this New Year.

Since the higher wage floors took effect 14 months ago, the jobless rate has fallen from 5.6 percent to 4.2 percent.

That is not supposed to happen! Setting or raising a minimum wage is supposed to kill jobs on a huge scale. The U.S. Cham-

ber of Commerce has preached that for decades, and groups like the Club for Growth, Americans for ERNEST Prosperity and the DUMAS legion of conservative political action committees weigh in regularly. It is the official position of the Republican Party. All the original 16 Republican candidates for president except Rick Santorum and John Kasich (Mike Huckabee was noncommittal) condemned minimum-wage hikes in the early debates as job killers.

Dr. Ben Carson, the genial surgeon, was the most adamant about wage laws.

Every time one has been raised anywhere, he declared, big job losses followed — it was just an economic law. He would have been nearer the statistical evidence if he had said big job losses never followed.

It is hard to make the case that a progressive minimum wage does much to raise living standards of median American workers or to perceptibly close the wealth gap between the 1 percent and everyone else, but the notion that progressive wage floors shrink the workforce not only

feted by groups financed by charter school NRA spent money in judicial races. Is Gov. management companies and other profi- Hutchinson, once employed by the NRA, teers in the education “reform” movement. likely to support a law requiring the NRA The pro-Israel lobby gave a couple of legis- to disclose sources of its election spending? lators a week in Israel (not much face time The hate group known as the Family Council with Palestinian sympathizers, I’d bet).

— in its ascendancy in Republican-dominated Foundations have even been formed Arkansas — won’t countenance disclosure of to “educate” legislative “leaders.” Senate its anti-woman bankrollers, either.

President Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy) If the coming special and regular leggot a trip to France from such a group. Sen. islative sessions give us nothing by way of Eddie Joe Williams (R-Cabot), the Arkan- “reform,” that may not be a cause for mourning. sas State Chamber of Commerce’s legislaThe ballot remains open to popution bellhop, got a $5,600 junket to China lar initiatives, though the legislature has paid by a group underwritten by major cor- worked hard to make this more difficult porate interests — insurance, tobacco, big with impediments to canvassing. Attorney pharma. Critics describe it as “tutelage” for General Leslie Rutledge is also proving a reliable speed brake to citizen initiatives. corporate politics.

Such gaming of the system inspires cyniSome good government groups keep trycism when the legislature talks of reform. ing. Little Rock attorney David Couch has Reforms tend to make life more comfortable asked Rutledge to review an amendment for legislators, not the people they serve. Lt. to fix wrongs in the 2014 “ethics” amendGov. Tim Griffin, for example, is complain- ment. It would lower campaign contribuing far and wide about RESTRICTIONS tion limits; end corporate contributions to of Arkansas campaign finance law. He’d PACs; require disclosure of those people like to see it “reformed” so he could raise contributing to independent election cammoney nonstop, as would most incumbents. paigns, and end loopholes for free wining Reforms, you may be sure, do NOT include and dining and trips of any sort, including from “educational groups.” searchable online financial databases.

Given that dark money is allowed to Best of all, Couch’s proposal would pro“educate” lawmakers on free trips, I have hibit the legislature from amending the little hope that the same legislators will people’s amendment. Once bitten, twice vote to end dark money in elections. The cured.

makes no sense, it is statistical nonsense.

Let’s keep the comparisons to the South. Six Southern states have no state minimum-wage law and their jobless rates are much higher than Arkansas’s. Of the states that do have minimums, only Arkansas and Florida have floors that exceed the federal minimum. But only Virginia, with a roaring economy, has a lower jobless rate than Arkansas, 4.1 to our 4.2 percent.

Likewise, everyone has known since 2010 that Obamacare is a giant job killer because the Chamber and PAC ads and every Republican member of Congress and political candidate told us it was a certainty. We got ready for a double-dip recession when the law kicked in fully in 2014. What happened? Almost from the day the health care market opened and states began expanding Medicaid, the U.S. job market dramatically improved.

It has been especially robust in the 30 states that opted to insure poor working adults. Alone among the Southern states, Arkansas took advantage of the Obamacare option and insured 275,000 people, and its jobless rate is lower than every Southern state’s except Virginia’s. The job market since 2014 has typically been better in the states embracing Obamacare’s Medicaid option than in the states that didn’t. Arkansas added 27,200 nonfarm

jobs the past year, a fourth of them, as you would expect, in health care, according to the state Department of Workforce Services and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Still, Ted Cruz says in every debate that Obamacare is driving millions of people onto the jobless rolls every year. No one challenges him. Donald Trump doesn’t lie about Obamacare job losses but simply says that, like Canada and Western Europe, we need a health care law that covers everybody. Kasich talks vaguely because he took the Obamacare option in Ohio, which helps drive the Ohio miracle he brags about.

If the party ever gives up on the minimum-wage and Obamacare orthodoxies, would it not also have to surrender its entire economic theory, which is that if you ever cut taxes on the rich enough, the tide of their prosperity will lift the ships of the middle class and poor? It’s been a failure virtually every place and time for 35 years. David Brooks, the party’s resident sage, wrote recently that it was time for the party to abandon the theory because presidential election results showed that the party’s voters clearly had by favoring Donald Trump and by telling pollsters that the rich should pay higher, not lower, taxes. Besides, he said, the theory no longer seems to be working.

When it had worked he couldn’t say. www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2016

7

The Obama doctrine

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n old friend recently told me about a remarkable conversation she’d had with her mother, aged 95. A white woman resident in the Deep South from birth, she’d shown a lifelong indifference, if not aversion, to politics. Her daughter describes her racial attitudes as characteristic of her generation — never a hater, but also no dissenter from how things used to be.

And yet she found herself in front of the TV watching Barack and Michelle Obama disembarking from Air Force One in Havana last week with tears streaming down her face. He’s such a great man, she told her daughter, and he tries so hard to do the right thing for the country.

And Michelle. Has any first lady ever exhibited more grace and class?

Why can’t more people see that? She’d asked her somewhat astonished daughter, who said that she personally wished Obama could run for another term — even if the president himself clearly does not.

Actually, polls reflect that people do understand what an extraordinary job President Obama has done under trying circumstances. Every recent survey shows his approval rating above 50 percent, a considerable accomplishment given cult-like opposition from Republican partisans since his 2009 inauguration.

Can anybody doubt that Obama would defeat either leading Republican candidate — the Sideshow Barker and the Snake Charmer alike — in a landslide? Doubtless his increased popularity derives partly from the contrast.

Partly too, it’s what Obama’s managed to do: unemployment under 5 percent and a record 72 consecutive months of job growth. No, things aren’t back to where we’d like them, economically speaking. But they’re headed the right way, and confidence is returning.

Equally important, Obama argues in an extraordinary interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the April 2016 Atlantic, is what he hasn’t done in foreign policy. Disregarding what he derisively calls “the Washington playbook” — the bellicose pronouncements of the city’s permanent class of think-tank commandos — he has refused to join yet another Middle Eastern civil war in Syria.

What pundits describe as Obama’s worst foreign policy debacle he thinks may have been his finest moment: the

August 2013 decision not to bomb Syria after drawing a “red line” in the desert forbidding the use of GENE chemical weapLYONS ons.

Never mind that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped engineer the removal of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal.

Goldberg reports that Hillary Clinton told people, “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice.”

But Obama decided it was foolish to take the nation to war over an ill-advised remark — defying not only the foreign policy establishment, but also America’s “frustrating, high-maintenance” Middle Eastern allies.

“History,” Goldberg writes “may record August 30, 2013, as the day Obama prevented the U.S. from entering yet another disastrous Muslim civil war, and the day he removed the threat of chemical attack on Israel, Turkey or Jordan. Or it could be remembered as the day he let the Middle East slip from America’s grasp, into the hands of Russia, Iran, and ISIS.” And good riddance, is Obama’s view.

With Iran having negotiated away its nuclear weapons-making capacity, what does it matter who referees the region’s endless tribal wars?

Obama’s most urgent priority is killing ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as he killed Osama bin Laden. Otherwise, he told one senator, “There is no way we should commit to governing the Middle East and North Africa. That would be a basic, fundamental mistake.”

The Turks could crush ISIS at will.

As it’s definitely in their national interest, maybe it’s time they summoned some.

At times, Obama concedes that he’s fallen short in the theatrical aspect of the presidency, appearing aloof and cerebral when the public wants passion. But he’s also persuaded that surrendering to “the cable news hype fest” leads to dumb decisions.

Obama says Putin found his frankness in The Atlantic surprising.

“Unlike you, Vladimir,” he joked “I don’t get to edit the piece before it’s published.”

The surrogatein-chief

A

SALUTE

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS Join Arkansas Capital Corporation and Simmons Bank as we salute bravery in business throughout the month of May. We’re looking for veterans who have made a lasting impression on our country and in the local business community. And we want your nominations.

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engagement in the Taft campaign became so prominent that critics raised questions about it, saying JAY that TAFT stood BARTH for “Take Advice From Theodore.”

In the century that has followed, it has been rare that a president has been in any position to campaign for their successor. President Ronald Reagan was popular enough to still draw large crowds on George H.W. Bush’s behalf, the Iran-Contra scandal had nicked the Teflon and Reagan was generally losing energy by 1988.

Famously, in 2000, Al Gore sidelined the emphatically talented Bill Clinton — with high job-approval ratings, but agonizingly low personal approval rating numbers.

When Clinton finally was allowed only to campaign in his home state in the final weeks of the general election, his efforts helped Mike Ross win a congressional seat, but were too late to help his veep gain the handful of Electoral College votes he needed for victory.

In contrast, Barack Obama seems only to be improving and becoming more multidimensional as a communicator as he moves toward retirement. For years, Obama was the master of the “big speech,” but weaker — indeed somewhat boring — with smaller scale statements. Now, he shows an ability to mix warm emotions and snarky edginess in different venues.

The president provided a great example of this skill last week in his reaction to the proposal by Republican presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz that neighborhoods with large Muslim-American populations should be patrolled. “I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance, which, by the way, the father of Senator Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free,” Obama said in a pithy, personal-but-not-meanspirited fileting of the proposal.

Make no mistake, there are many parts of America where Obama will not be welcomed with open arms. However, there will be no better surrogate for Clinton in the cities and suburbs of the swing states of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin than this guy who is very much in sync with his times and whose style of governing will likely look even more uplifting by November.

Veteran

EDU

lmost unnoticed in the hubbub of presidential nomination politics is the fact that the president we have is popular again. According to the daily tracker of presidential job approval ratings published by Gallup, President Obama’s public approval is now up to 53 percent, the highest level since the first weeks of his second term. Whether it is the continued positive economic news (including extraordinarily low unemployment rates and gasoline prices), historic foreign policy initiatives such as last week’s trip to Cuba, or a preliminary nostalgia for a president marked by “an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance” (as David Brooks put it in a recent column titled “I Miss Barack Obama”) in the midst of a presidential campaign marked by a deeply inelegant Republican frontrunner, many Americans who had turned themselves off to the president have turned back on to him in large enough numbers to move him into positive approval territory.

This rebound in presidential popularity is important for two reasons. First, we know that the job approval numbers of the incumbent president are one of the most important variables in explaining the outcome of any presidential election. Political scientist Alan Abramowitz shows that over half of the percentage of the vote gained in open-seat elections is explained by the approval rating of the president leaving office. While Obama’s approval numbers are not high enough to be a major advantage for a Democratic candidate seeking to succeed him, they are certainly no longer a drag on that candidate.

More important than this statistical reality is the fact that Obama — a proven vote-getter still very much in his prime — has communication skills allowing him to serve as a potent surrogate for a Democratic general election candidate, especially one campaigning on extending his basic governing philosophy — like his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, we probably have to go back to 1908 to find a popular president in a position to move voters on behalf of the fellow partisan seeking to replace him. An extremely popular Theodore Roosevelt — living up to his promise to not seek a full third term — actively campaigned for his decidedly less politically adept Secretary of War William Howard Taft. Roosevelt’s

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Arkansas Reporter

THE

Take it off Group wants prude nude law revoked.

BY DAVID KOON

N

udism is terrific, and you should try it!

That’s not an editorial comment, by the way. It’s written there to make a point. Specifically, if local police and prosecutors wanted to follow the letter of current Arkansas law, the author of this article is, as of the moment you read that sentence, allegedly guilty of a Class A misdemeanor punishable by a $2,500 fine and up to a year in jail. The editor and publisher of Arkansas Times as well. The crime?

Under Arkansas criminal statute 5-68204, the state’s 59-year-old anti-nudism law, it is illegal for any “person, club, camp, corporation, partnership, association or organization to advocate, demonstrate, or promote nudism.”

Technically, we just advocated and promoted being naked with others in social situations.

While the criminal code of any state is full of antiquated and ridiculous laws, an advocate pushing for the repeal of the state’s anti-nudism statute says this one is no laughing matter. The founder of the advocacy group, which operates a website urging repeal of the law at unconstitutionalarkansas.org, says the law puts the activities of nudists in Arkansas under a constant cloud of fear, with the clause prohibiting people from advocating for or promoting nudism making people reluctant to even speak out for the repeal of the law, which he calls blatantly unconstitutional on multiple points.

The state’s anti-nudism statute was written following a January 1957 arrest at a nudist camp called Wildwood Lodge, located near Forrest City. The caretaker of the lodge was taken into custody and charged with indecent exposure. The charge was later withdrawn after officers testified they’d witnessed no “indecency” at the location. The caretaker paid only a $100 fine for “possessing obscene literature.” The anti-nudism law was passed by the legislature the 10

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

following month.

Under the law, naked people are forbidden from congregating or gathering with anyone “as a form of social practice,” with the exception of a doctor, nurse or their legally-wedded spouse.”

In addition to prohibiting individuals from advocating, practicing or promoting nudism, the law also makes it a Class A misdemeanor for anyone to “rent, lease, or otherwise permit his or her land, premises or buildings” to be used to advocate, demonstrate or promote nudism.

Dale is the founder of Unconstitutional Arkansas. He asked us not to use his last name, because he said his career might be jeopardized if he came out in support of nudism, but also because he worries about being prosecuted under the law if he’s seen as advocating nudism. Dale said he’d been working toward getting the law repealed for three years, including paying to have two billboards at the intersection of Highway 107 and Highway 89 near Jacksonville put up to direct people to the Unconstitutional Arkansas website. Dale said he’s been involved in nudism for over 30 years, and says it appeals to most people because being naked is more comfortable than wearing clothes. He said public suspicion that nudism is about sexual gratification or exhibitionism are rooted in society’s body shame issues.

“It goes back to the assumption that, if you’re nude, you’re either taking a shower or you’re having sex,” he said.

“In the world of naturism, that’s just not an accurate assumption. You can ride a bike, you can garden, you can play volleyball, you can go swimming, you can do any normal, everyday thing [while] not wearing clothes.”

Dale said he has visited nudist or “naturist” resorts overseas and in more than 10 states, including events in Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Most of the resorts he visited, he said, were “family friendly” and allowed parents and

CAUTIOUS PROMOTION: A billboard promotes the campaign to repeal state’s nude law.

children to socialize naked together. He said that, to his knowledge, Arkansas is the only state that has a law specifically criminalizing the practice of nudism.

“The majority of states have laws against nudity,” he said, “but it’s public nudity. It’s indecent-exposure type laws.

A lot of those are very poorly written and, as a result, they have the unintended consequence of criminalizing naturism.

They’re written with the intention of controlling public nudity, but they’re written in a way that can be interpreted to affect people who really aren’t doing anything wrong.”

Dale said that his attempts to rally other Arkansas nudists to the cause of repealing the law have been mostly unsuccessful because people are too afraid of coming out, or because they fear breaking the law and facing fines or jail time simply by speaking out against it. While he said the law has never been enforced as far as he knows, it’s still a Sword of Damocles. He feels it would be found unconstitutional if it was ever tested in court, but doesn’t want to be the test case. On his website, he carefully avoids anything that could be seen as advocating or promoting nudism, instead only pointing out how the law runs contrary to the U.S. Constitution.

“Some have offered [to help],” he said, “and then I ask them to do something, and nothing happens. But, again, if somebody gets involved in this, they put themselves in jeopardy. If the courts interpret this a certain way, then there goes their money. You’re trying to support a family and all of a sudden, you’re in jail because you expressed an opinion.”

Pulaski County Chief Deputy Pros-

ecutor John Johnson was unaware of the law banning nudism in the state until contacted for comment by Arkansas Times. He called the law crazy, stupid and vague, and said the guarantee of freedom of speech would preclude his office from ever prosecuting someone for advocating or promoting nudism, even if they wanted to waste time doing so.

“I think it would be hard to prosecute someone for saying ‘nudism is great,’ as promoting nudism,” he said. “To me, this is a pretty vague statute. What does ‘congregating’ mean? More importantly, what does ‘as a form of social practice’ mean? I’m not sure.”

As to whether his office would prosecute someone arrested for being nude with others in the privacy of their home or secluded property, Johnson said that he couldn’t imagine a set of circumstances where they would charge someone under the law unless there was “some social harm” from the gathering.

“To me, it’s kind of a crazy statute, written to prohibit a wide spectrum of accepted adult activity,” he said. “I guess we would have to wait and see exactly what the social harm was and determine if it did, in fact, violate not just the statute but the spirit of the statute.”

Johnson did say, however, that if children were present at a nudist gathering in Pulaski County, the chances that adults in attendance might be charged would go up “without question.” He added, however, that the determination of whether or not charges would be brought would be based on “a factdriven decision as to whether the purpose was for sexual gratification and whether the children were being exploited in any way.”

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The battle over managed care A big fight is coming in the April 6 special session.

BY DAVID RAMSEY

T

he legislature will convene for a special session next week on health care to vote on two big questions, with billions of Medicaid dollars at stake: 1) Should the private option, which provides health insurance for more than 250,000 Arkansans, continue at the end of this fiscal year in July? 2) How should the state go about seeking reforms to certain high-cost populations in the traditional Medicaid program?

While the private option, the state’s unique version of Medicaid expansion, gets most of the headlines, the legislature will also take up another big question when it convenes for a special session on health care next week. With a billion dollars in Medicaid spending at stake, lawmakers will vote on whether to use managed care companies to enact reforms for certain high-cost populations in the program.

Here’s the background: Three quarters of spending in the traditional Medicaid program goes to covering long-term services and support for three major groups: long-term care for the elderly and the severely disabled, care for the developmentally disabled, and behavioral health. The Beebe administration enacted programs to incentivize more cost-effective care for other parts of the Medicaid program, but these populations remained outside of these efforts (largely thanks to the efforts of lobbyists for the relevant medical providers), and have continued to operate under the old fee-for-service system without any form of care management at all. The state’s consultant, The Stephen Group, concluded that this was a problem, and outgoing Department of Human Services Director John Selig agreed. Issues range from long-term care patients getting stuck in more expensive nursing homes when home-and-community-

based care would be more appropriate, to behavioral health providers overbilling or overprescribing in ways that do not benefit patients. Meanwhile, a lack of care coordination may lead to less preventative care, unnecessary hospitalizations and redundancies or inefficiencies that increase costs without improving care (and sometimes make things worse for beneficiaries).

The state’s Health Reform Legislative Task Force came to broad agreement that better care management for Medicaid’s high-cost populations could lead to more cost-effective care that maintained (or in some cases improved) quality. When it came to just how to do this, however, the task force was bitterly divided.

One plan, backed by the governor and the Republican leadership on the task force, would employ a managed care company to push these changes for the developmental disability and behavioral health populations. The other plan, dubbed “DiamondCare,” would aim to implement the same slate of reforms, but would employ an administrative services organization (ASO) instead of a managed care company and would still have the state pay providers directly on a fee-forservice basis. DiamondCare is backed by a collation of providers’ allies in the legislature who vehemently oppose managed care — including Republicans like Sen. Missy Irvin of Mountain View and Rep. Michelle Gray of Melbourne and Democrats like Rep. Deborah Ferguson of West Memphis.

Both plans have the same big goals: more care coordination, more focus on primary care doctors, incentives for providers to provide cost-effective and high-quality care, and a “rebalancing” that would give more options for beneficiaries currently served by nursing

Arkansas Times Recommends: BIG Spring things THE

PICTURE

My only springtime ritual — other than illegally importing huge quantities of pseudoephedrine from nearby states more casual about that stuff (legalize it!) — is to annually revisit the masterful, criminally unreleased Ghostface Killah song “The Sun,” featuring Raekwon, RZA and the illustrious Slick Rick. To my knowledge, this is the only rap song that claims to be about the sun and is actually, literally, only about the sun — no metaphors here. It’s just an awestruck tribute to a beautiful, crucial part of our solar system we often take for granted. (“Look who’s shining again,” Ghostface raps cheekily on the hook, sounding like a proud parent.) The song was supposed to be included on Ghostface’s 2001 album “Bulletproof Wallets,” but, the story goes, RZA was stoned when he made the beat, and later couldn’t remember what the sample was. No sample clearance, no dice. And it was our loss, pre-YouTube.

— Will Stephenson Let me begin defensively by saying that I, like you, resent the spandexed, graying fraternity of the well-off that’s connoted by the word cyclist. I like riding my bike; I hate the consumer culture of cycling, with its weird brand obsessions and monomaniacal fascination with high-end gear. Nonetheless, I’ve come around to the conclusion that if you commute by bike, it’s only wise to save up for a sturdy bag. In my experience, the shoulder strap on a cheap laptop bag is often the first component to fail, and if that strap is the sole thing suspending your computer several feet off the ground, you’d do well to minimize your risk. (By the way — if this logic makes sense to you, wear a helmet.)

A few weeks ago, I shelled out $130 for a very nice messenger bag from some San Francisco-based (sigh) company called Timbuk2. I may respect myself less now, but the bag’s workmanship makes me confident that it’ll remain cinched tightly to my body even after I’m flattened by the inevitable cement truck on some (hopefully) distant spring morning.

— Benjamin Hardy

This is the season that birdwatchers live for.

First, in March, you hear the upward zzzzip of the parula warbler, the weezy-weezy-weezy of the black and white, the high-pitched spee! of the blue-gray gnatcatcher (a mockingbird in miniature whose abundance can get on your nerves). Then the black-throated greens, and, on or about April 14, beeebuzz tells you the blue-winged warbler is right overhead. The yellow-breasted chat is easy to find, thanks to its size — a bit larger than the teeny warblers — and its conversational whistles and chups.

Deliciously challenging shorebirds — all those little peeps that look just alike — and dowitchers and plovers and so forth — move through. Only a dullard would not thrill to the sight of dozens of bobolinks probing the mud in a field in May. Migration means you get up early to stroll through the woods and arrive late to work. It means trips to sewer ponds, drained minnow ponds, grasslands, plowed fields. Your heart breaks a little as the redstarts and Wilson’s come through, because they are bringing up the warbler rear. You may utter profanity if once more you missed the twoday tour of the black-billed cuckoo in Boyle Park. But here come the painted buntings and they stay to nest, and if that isn’t solace enough for you, I don’t know what is.

— Leslie Newell Peacock

Go to a high school track meet. In spring, the “thinclads” go outside to run, jump and throw. It is the purest of competitions. Concussions are rare unless a competitor walks in front of a flying shot put. It’s simply man and woman against each other and the clock and the tape measure. No balls. Little contact. But plenty of drama. Look for schools with good mile relay teams, the men hitting close to 20 miles an hour around the quarter-mile (or 400-meter) oval. The track teams are always underappreciated. Fewer college scholarships are available. Professional careers are rare. But there are plenty of good seats, of that you may be sure.

— Max Brantley

www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2016

11

THE BATTLE OVER MANAGED CARE, CONT. home and other institutional settings to move into home or community-based care if those were more appropriate for their care. The big difference between the two plans has to do with who takes on the risk for potential cost overruns and how providers are paid.

Under the governor’s proposal, the state would negotiate a per-person cost with managed care companies to cover the beneficiaries in the behavioral health and developmental disability populations; if the managed care company beat that number, they would profit, but if costs went high the managed care company would be stuck with those cost overruns (this is known as “fully capitated risk”). Typically, managed care companies also pay providers with some form of capitated risk.

Under DiamondCare, the administrative services organization (ASO) wouldn’t take on the same level of risk if cost targets were not met (and providers, who would still be paid directly on a fee-forservice basis, might not face any financial risk at all). The ASO would have to pay a flat fee if benchmarks were not met and could receive a share of the savings if costs were below benchmark; DHS would be tasked with monitoring the ASO to ensure that quality of care was maintained and would determine whether benchmarks were achieved. But other than collecting the fee from the ASO, if DiamondCare failed to meet its benchmarks, the state would be on the hook for cost overruns.

In both plans, the nursing homes have been carved out. Thanks to their powerful lobbyists, they have made a separate agreement with the state to implement reforms on their own, focused on transitioning beneficiaries who would be better served by home and community-based care rather than nursing homes (one area that would clearly both improve quality of care and save substantial amounts of money).

They have promised $250 million in savings over five years; the draft legislation states that DHS will hire an independent actuary to confirm the savings. The governor has stated that if the nursing homes fail to meet their targets, they will be subjected to managed care.

Both proposals would also exempt the state’s human development centers, where some developmentally disabled beneficiaries receive services.

The Stephen Group estimated that the governor’s managed care proposal would save $1.439 billion over the course of five years (the state has to pay for around 30 percent of traditional Medicaid costs, so that would save Arkansas around $430 million). Diamond12

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

Care, meanwhile, would save $1.057 billion (or $317 million for the state) over the same period, according to The Stephen Group. Those figures are inclusive of the savings from the carved-out nursing home initiative (The Stephen Group projected that savings from nursing homes would nearly double if they were covered by managed care).

Opponents of managed care are clearly concerned about the impact on providers’ bottom lines (all five of the architects of DiamondCare are either medical providers or have family connections to medical providers). But they also argue that managed care would end up squeezing beneficiaries in order to achieve savings.

Proponents note that Medicaid managed care would still have to cover Medicaid benefits by law and point to dramatically higher savings predicted by The Stephen Group. They also worry about whether DiamondCare would put sufficient pressure on providers, whether it would be too susceptible to the influence of lobbying, and whether state agencies and the ASO could deliver on results. Hutchinson said recently that Medicaid managed care had a track record, whereas DiamondCare was “riskier for the state.”

Hutchinson attempted to address the concerns of managed care opponents by including a “patients bill of rights” and a “provider bill of rights,” offering certain protections and guarantees, but opponents of managed care believe that the companies will be able to outmaneuver the state in contract negotiations.

Both plans promise to channel some of the savings back into the Medicaid program, aiming to reduce the waiting list for a waiver program for home and community-based care for around 3,000 developmentally disabled children as well as putting funds into a trust fund for potential costs for the private option down the line. However, neither plan has any hard guarantees about where the savings will end up, and Hutchinson and Republicans in the legislature are no doubt hoping for further tax cuts.

As the Times went to press, the governor announced that he will not allow a vote on DiamondCare during the special session (it is the governor’s prerogative to decide what bills to put on the call), infuriating opponents of his managed care plan. DiamondCare supporters do have some procedural options to get a vote on their plan, but Hutchinson’s move makes their prospects much more difficult.

Support for health care reporting made possible by the Arkansas Public Policy Panel.

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THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Unplugged

T

hough our smartphone might as well be glued to our hand these days, The Observer lived until six years ago with nary a cell phone at all, much less one of the smart variety.

Hard to imagine, youngsters, but there was once a time when everybody — short of cops, ambulance drivers, truckers and Trumpians so rich they were able to afford a 10-pound mobile phone in a bag — went for long stretches completely incommunicado. These days, we can’t even run down to the corner store without our pocket computer. To think The Observer and Spouse once struck out for the wilds of Iowa with only our wits, a map and the kindness of strangers with landlines along the road between us and ruin. Those were the days!

Yours Truly has threatened for years to write a story for the Times in which we go digital cold turkey for a month, including attempting to do the job of a reporter with only a rolodex and telephone, like our inky forebears. We honestly don’t know if we could pull that one off.

Speaking of: Little Rock artist V.L. Cox, whose exhibition “Murder of Crows” about race and sex discrimination just closed (see the March 3 issue of the Times for more on the show), decided she needed a rest from manning a gallery and talking art for several weeks. So, she decided to do something drastic: turn off her cellphone and avoid Facebook and the Internet. “I knew it was time to step back,” she wrote, “when I started thinking that the purchase of new keyboards came with the instructions that ‘you must leave all civility behind while operating.’ ” She also thought keeping a diary of her withdrawal symptoms would be a good idea, and shared them with The Observer — through email, it must be noted: “Day 1: I keep looking and picking up my phone (every 3 minutes). Forced myself to go mow the lawn and work the garden while still staring at my phone as it sat inanimate on the picnic table outside. Turned it OFF for the first time in forever when I went to bed. Slept like

the dead for the first time in months.

“Day 2: Still fighting the urge to pick up my phone, but can at least leave it on the kitchen table and walk into another room without feeling completely ‘naked.’

Raked the yard (after just recklessly mowing over all the limbs the day before thinking I might be missing something on my phone) and felt pride in my yard after 1.5 years. Took the time to cook a delicious healthy dinner (instead of eating out and staring at my phone) and turned it off when I went to bed. I slept like the dead for the second time in months.

“Day 3: Woke up feeling rested and full of energy, without my eyes sticking together. … My eyes are not dry! I constantly have to keep moisture drops in my pocket and in my pillowcase. I HAVE LOST A POUND AFTER MOVING AROUND MORE, and I noticed that Sherrie [V.L.’s partner] is funny again (God, she’s a riot!). My vocabulary and spelling skills are also sloooowly coming back (love/hate relationship with spellcheck.) I predict Day 4 will be positive as well and today I’m back in the studio again starting some new projects while on hiatus and have chosen to only be around immediate friends and family. Bottom line, I need a break from the blatant ‘intentional’ ignorance spewing across bandwidth and the airwaves so I can focus and feel human again. The good news? So far it’s working.”

Sidenote: Later on Day 3, Cox made a trip to the Habitat for Humanity thrift store on Pike Avenue in North Little Rock, where she heard a woman cry out that her car had just been stolen.

Without thinking, Cox hopped in her hot-rod Dodge Caravan and gave chase through Baring Cross, but lost the car thief by stopping for red lights. Cox apologized to police for getting in their business. Convinced she wasn’t involved, the police moved on, and caught the thief in Little Rock.

“It’s amazing what is really going on in the world around you if you just look up from a cell phone screen,” she said.

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MARCH 31, 2016

13

THE BALLAD OF FRED AND YOKO COURTESY MARTY MOTE

One of the world’s foremost Beatles collectors died homeless in Little Rock last year.

BY WILL STEPHENSON

SQUATTER’S RIGHTS: Arnold lived on the second floor of a condemned apartment building in Southwest Little Rock.

ONE MORNING LAST DECEMBER, just before dawn, a 67-year-old man named Fred Arnold stepped into a crosswalk on Baseline Road and was immediately struck by a teal Chevrolet van going 35 mph. The driver quickly slammed on brakes, but the force of impact was great enough to launch Arnold’s body almost 60 feet away, where he came to rest, dead, in a patch of grass next to a telephone pole. Little Rock police officer Ray Moreno arrived at the scene soon afterward and declared the collision an accident: It was dark, the driver couldn’t see him properly, Arnold had moved too quickly and hadn’t looked both ways before entering the street. Furthermore, Moreno recognized Arnold right away. In his report, he noted, “This subject has been warned on many occasions by police about walking into traffic.” Or as Moreno told me later, “He’d done it so many times, it was like he was playing Russian roulette.”

14 MARCH 31, 2016 ARKANSAS TIMES

Arnold was albino, had long stringy white hair and regularly sported an eye patch (he was legally blind). He had spent the last few years living homeless on the streets of Little Rock. You might have seen him making his daily rounds: He dressed mostly in black and often walked with a cane. His typical territory was a two- or three-mile stretch of Southwest Little Rock that extended from the Dee Brown Library, where he’d frequently spend hours taking advantage of the building’s Internet access, and the Stone Crest Apartments a few miles west, a dilapidated complex that had been condemned and cleared out years before by the Department of Neighborhoods and Housing (City Manager Bruce Moore had cited its “multiple code violations” and “deplorable shape”). Arnold had nevertheless continued to squat on the second-floor walkway of his old apartment, propping up a slab of plywood to shield himself from passersby. When he didn’t sleep at the condemned building — when, for instance, Little Rock police would rouse him and insist that he leave — he’d often find a nice spot on a narrow bridge in front of the library, and would curl up and fall asleep there instead.

Arnold’s death was Arkansas’s 476th traffic fatality in 2015. As such, the incident went largely unacknowledged by the local media, aside from a brief blurb in the Arkansas DemocratGazette, which identified the victim as Fred William Arnold and concluded, “Road conditions at the time were described as clear and dry.” Anyone reading the news would have thought very little of the accident. A homeless man had died in the street: He simply hadn’t looked both ways before he’d walked. If you had searched for Arnold’s name on the Internet, for that matter, you would have discovered that he was listed on the state sex offender database, where you would have been confronted by a harrowing mugshot in which, with his haggard white mane and eye patch, Arnold bore a distinct resemblance to a disheveled pirate. So: a tragic death, but a pitiful one.

Not long after the accident, however, I received an email from an elderly man in Columbia, S.C, named Walter Durst. He’d been a friend of Arnold’s for many years, he explained.

Durst had known he’d been living on the street, and when his friend had

stopped answering his emails, he’d become concerned. “When I hadn’t heard from him, I searched his name online, as I thought maybe he was in jail,” Durst wrote. That’s when he found the news item about his death.

He was aware of the Arkansas Times, he said, because Arnold would occasionally send him issues in the mail.

So he wrote to us, because he thought that someone should know about Fred — about his life. He wasn’t expecting much. “I knew there would be no obituary,” Durst said. “After all, why would a homeless man have an obituary?”

“I knew there would be no obituary,” Durst said. “After all, why would a homeless man have an obituary?”

Some of the things Durst claimed in his letter seemed intriguing, even moving. He said that Arnold, who often went by the nickname Billy, had once owned a set of iconic record stores in Charleston, S.C., where he had also been a radio show host and an active promoter of punk bands in the 1980s.

He said he’d visited London, Cuba and Russia (that his politics “bordered on Communist”) and had also briefly lived in Colorado, as he preferred a colder climate. He said that Arnold had suffered a number of strokes in recent years, exacerbating many of his other problems. The letter, though, grew stranger as it went on. Durst claimed, for instance, that Arnold had known all the members of The Beatles, and had been particularly good friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. That after Lennon’s death, Arnold and Ono had continued to correspond and had remained close friends. “It was one of the hardest things I have ever done,” he wrote, “when I had to write to Yoko to tell her of Fred’s death.” *** IN AN EFFORT TO HELP his struggling friend, Durst had contacted a number of Little Rock churches in recent years, hoping they could offer some assistance. He claims they denied there was anything they could do for a nonmember (and a registered sex offender, at that). “That is not Biblical,” Durst said. “I am a

strong Christian person and it hurts when a Christian group says no.”

Unbeknownst to Durst, there was at least one local Christian organization — very broadly defined — that had been helping Arnold for some time.

The Shack, a rustic brick storefront a few miles down Baseline from the spot where Arnold was killed, is a self-described “street ministry” run

by Pastor Marty Mote and his wife, Lynda, both of whom had gotten to know Arnold very well in the years before his death.

“Everything you see here has been donated,” Mote told me when I visited recently, waving proudly around the building, which was cluttered with used furniture, clothing, books and appliances of all varieties. “Even the building was donated.” When it isn’t being utilized as a casual, nondenominational place of worship — “We hang here,” Mote said of his ministerial approach, “I just throw out ideas” — the building offers a shower, laundromat and kitchen for homeless and impoverished locals, and provides necessities like clean underwear, socks and the occasional utility bill payment for an overwhelmed parent. Mote, who wore a faded orange T-shirt and ratty tennis shoes, grew up in the area, and after a 30-year career at AT&T, had returned to the neighborhood, now one of the major terminals of the city’s homeless population, to pursue his spiritual calling.

“Man, sharing the gospel just means sharing love,” he told me, shaking his head disapprovingly as he described certain other more “official” churches nearby, which he believed made no credible efforts at community outreach. One acquaintance, an official at an organized church, had recently told him, “You’re dealing with the people we don’t want to deal with.” From the ceiling of The Shack were hung kayaks, guitars and a disco ball. On a back wall, in large black lettering, someone had transcribed a verse from the Book of Revelations: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me.”

Several years ago, Fred Arnold had been the one to stand at their door and knock. The Motes used to host regular cookouts near the Stone Crest Apartments, and over time Arnold had 15 MARCH 31, 2016 arktimes.com

permitted to live — at his level, he couldn’t legally reside within 2,000 feet of a school, park, daycare center or church. This made finding appropriate housing a kind of insoluble puzzle, and so Arnold would often ignore the requirements altogether, inevitably leading to rejection, eviction or arrest.

Mote couldn’t keep up with the innumerable embarrassments and difficulties that resulted, and so Arnold’s missives grew tinged with resentment and self-pity. “You have not returned my calls!” he began one letter early last year. “Guess you do not wish to be my friend anymore!” he wrote in another.

Mote drove me by the Stone Crest Apartments where Arnold had often

camp that Arnold had occasionally frequented. When we got there, we found the place newly clear-cut, a tableau of downed trees and foliage, chainsaws still audible from the other end of the field. On the edge of the old camp, we found two men, Mike and Chuck, who seemed to be there simply to observe the destruction of an old home.

Mike sat in a red lawn chair next to a black suitcase, which contained his wardrobe. They remembered Fred Arnold well, and called him “self-sufficient.” Mike added, “He pretty much kept about himself.” Chuck said that he was no longer homeless himself, being now gainfully employed at a nearby fast-food restaurant, though

COURTESY MIKE AMMONS

overcome his shyness and irascibility, and had begun to stop by. “He was kinda pitiful, just his situation,” Mote remembered, noting that he’d gotten used to seeing Arnold walking his morning rounds to McDonalds, to the library and back. Eventually, Arnold opened up to Mote. He confessed everything — his sex offender status, his avowed friendship with Yoko Ono — and in turn, Mote helped him locate short-term living situations and clothes that fit properly. (Did he really believe that Arnold was friends with Yoko Ono, I asked? “Why not?” he replied.) Mote helped him move, and once even bonded him out of jail, though he now figures Arnold might have been better off had he left him there.

In his kitchen, Mote stood up from his computer and gestured for me to look at his email inbox. There were countless rows of messages from Arnold, detailing emergencies (he seemed to get robbed on a near-daily basis) or asking for help or supplies of some kind or another. Many were simply updates, lonely dispatches from a person who needed someone to care about his wellbeing, to acknowledge the increasing severity of his situation: May sleep on the outdoor benches tonight, hope I don’t end up with the flu.

I got robbed, assaulted last night in my room by the guy who used to live there. He threw me on the floor and we tore the phone in half!

It was a bit warmer last evening under the moonlight. 40 years in retail and to be outdoors with almost nothing! I am sad.

If you locate any blue jeans ... I can use a loaf of bread too.

I have been released from hospital again and I still have nowhere to live and I keep getting wet!

Did you locate shoes for me?

Over time, the tone of these emails became more desperate. Mote admits now that he’d begun to find Arnold occasionally frustrating. As a registered sex offender, there were many regulations about where Arnold was 16 MARCH 31, 2016 ARKANSAS TIMES

ARNOLD AT HOME: At his sister’s apartment, with his beloved cat, The Who.

slept. The building still stands, though the electrical meters and breaker boxes have been stripped of their copper and aluminum wiring. The windows and doors of the rooms have been nailed tightly shut with dark brown boards, giving it the appearance of a mausoleum. Mote remembered the week the place was condemned. “Everyone was supposed to be out by that Friday,” he said. “Needless to say, come Monday, Fred was still there.”

We drove on, down an alleyway alongside a FoodWise Supermarket. Beside the building’s dumpsters stood a stack of ripped couches and stained mattresses, on which Arnold had sometimes slept as well. A little further on, behind the store, there had once been a populous homeless

the experience of living on the streets was something he’d never forget.

He’d been in prison six times, he said unprompted, once for arson. “It was over a lady,” he admitted. Mike was a musician — decades ago he had played drums for a North Little Rock band that had achieved some brief momentum. (I looked them up later; they’d opened for Styx and Pat Benatar.) Lately he’s been considering taking up the harmonica and forming a blues group.

The destruction of the camp in front of them was a fact about which they seemed less upset than simply curious. They just wanted to watch.

“There’s nothing wrong with sittin’ right here,” Chuck said, and Mike nodded. “It’s peaceful, man.”

There was one other location from Fred Arnold’s final years I had hoped to see. He’d rented a U-Haul storage unit — a fairly compact one, maybe 5 by 10 feet, according to Mote, who had periodically helped him move his belongings in and out. “He tried sleeping there for a few nights, until they came and told him he couldn’t,” Mote said. He’d run an extension cord from the hallway into his unit, and had a desk, on which he’d set up his computer (a cheap one he’d bought with scratch-off lottery ticket winnings, which was later stolen). What else could he have kept in storage, I wondered? Mote remembered “boxes of keepsakes.” Arnold had sold records for four decades, and had once been renowned for his collection. What could have happened to it all? Could it be somewhere here in town, locked away and unclaimed?

Mote didn’t think so. The U-Haul management, he said, had evicted his stuff three or four weeks before he was killed. He shrugged. “I don’t know where it all is now.” There was something else Mote remembered seeing in the unit, however, hanging from one of the walls: a black canvas jacket, which Arnold claimed had been a gift from his friend, Yoko. Embroidered on the back, in white, was the word “IMAGINE.” *** MOTE AND DURST HAD BOTH MENTIONED that Arnold had a sister who lived in Little Rock, but neither knew her name or address. I finally located her by calling the offices of the first local apartment building Arnold had been evicted from, The Cottages,

“I’m not handicapped,” he once told a student newspaper in South Carolina, “because in order to be handicapped, you have to have lost something. I haven’t lost anything. I was born this way.” a government-subsidized housing community in Southwest Little Rock.

Linda, Arnold’s sister, still lives there today with her son Mike and his dog, Prissy, a nervous black terrier that had been left behind by Mike’s exgirlfriend. On a recent afternoon, I went to see them, hoping to learn more about Arnold’s past.

The living room was cramped and dim, crowded with medicine bottles, family memorabilia and the vestiges of Mike’s most recent metal scrapping ventures. A true-crime series played on a small television, though no one appeared to be watching it. Spread out on the dining room table were a set of dominoes and an overflowing ashtray. Above the couch hung a large, impressive portrait of a black panther in repose. On the wall next to it was a remarkably life-like penciled sketch of Jesus. Mike explained that his brother, another of Linda’s children, had done the drawing, and was currently in prison. He took the frame down from the wall so that I could better admire its detailed craftsmanship. “I vowed I wouldn’t get a tattoo until my brother got out of the pen,” he told me. “Now you understand why.”

Linda herself lay in a recliner, covered by a blanket, coughing intermittently. She floated in and out of our

conversation, alternating between enthusiasm and pained exhaustion, which Mike attributed to the Fentanyl patches she’d been recently prescribed. “The doctors gave me six months to live in September,” she told me more than once. However, she brightened at any discussions of her family, and especially her late brother, whom she had taken in after a stroke had curtailed his retail career in 2006. (Once his sex offender status had been discovered, he had been asked to leave The Cottages.) Speaking to Linda, you are left with the impression of extraordinary kindness but also distance, a strong woman left alone to stew over a doctor’s death sentence.

Mike, who was friendly, earnest and bearded, with a white bandana wrapped around his forehead, rushed frantically around the apartment smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and pulling dense, dusty photo albums from the most unlikely corners of the room. Many of the albums were filled with pictures of wild animals: raccoons, pigs and bobcats, all of which Linda had made a habit of domesticating as pets throughout her life. One particular raccoon — his eyes laser-yellow in the glare of the camera’s flash — seemed to occupy a particular place of prominence in their memories. Linda had named him Chatterbox. “That was my baby,” she’d say softly, whenever we’d turn the page to another photo of the frightened raccoon. Finally, Mike located a picture he’d been looking for. It showed Fred, Linda, their mother and grandparents, all sitting together smiling around a dinner table sometime in the 1950s.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

ARNOLD WAS BORN IN DELTA, COLO., on Nov. 27, 1948. His mother, Helen, had joined the Dailey Brothers circus three years before with her brother, Cecil — they were both albino, and so were billed as sideshow attractions. Linda was born soon afterward. (Fred and Linda had different fathers, neither of whom they met.)

Linda was the only nonalbino of the group; they called her the black sheep of the family. When Fred and Linda were still young children, Helen began manifesting violent symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. In a fit of rage, she once slashed Linda’s face with a fork, and was later accused of attempting to drop her daughter off the railing of a bridge. After the latter incident, Fred and Linda were taken in by their grandparents, John William and Mattie Mae, who relocated them as young children to Charleston, S.C. In Charleston, Fred moved into the attic, and was “just mischievous as hell,” Linda told me, though in his grandmother’s eyes, “he could do no

wrong.” He was briefly enrolled in a school for the blind, as his vision had been impaired since birth, though he disliked the notion that he was disabled. “I’m not handicapped,” he once told a student newspaper in South Carolina, “because in order to be handicapped, you have to have lost something. I haven’t lost anything. I was born this way.”

Arnold has himself written about his primal encounter with The Beatles, by all accounts the most important revelation of his life. The story can be found in a late ’70s issue of a zine called Beatlefan. He wrote that his earlier experiences with “church music” and novelty pop had largely left him cold. He’d heard The Beach Boys thanks to a friend’s older brother, but, “I didn’t care about them,” he wrote, “nor those Motown songs.”

During lunch one day in February of 1964, however, he heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on a little transistor radio. He was 15. The song electrified him. The DJ announced that the group would be performing the following Sunday on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and on the night, he found himself “glued” to the TV. This particular televised moment has long since acquired the sheen of cliche for a generation,

but I’d submit that Arnold’s viewing was something of a fundamentally different order. Simply put — though there’s nothing simple about it — Fred Arnold’s life now made sense to him.

“He acted like they were a gift from heaven,” Linda remembered of that night, and as Arnold himself would later put it in an interview, “They are all gods really, at least to me.”

The next morning, Arnold sold all of his belongings and began a Beatles collection that would grow to become one of the largest of its kind in the world.

COURTESY MIKE AMMONS

*** EDDIE FENNELL, A RETIRED JOURNALIST for the Charleston Post & Courier, remembers the first time he met Fred Arnold. It was the summer of 1970, The Beatles had just announced their break-up, and Fennell had taken the news hard. He was an aspiring Beatles collector himself, and had accumulated what he believed to be their entire official output. So it shocked him when, walking past Arnold’s record store on King Street — then called The Odyssey — he noticed two Beatles LPs in the window he’d never so much as heard of. He walked inside to investigate and there found one of the most eccentric figures he’d ever meet.

“Just one-of-a-kind,” Fennell laughed recently. “A real unique guy.”

Linda worked in her brother’s store for a time, but never shared his Beatles enthusiasm. Elvis was her guy. “I wasn’t for all that beat-bop and shit; I was raised on country,” she told me.

As Arnold’s taste became more ambitious and unconventional, Linda felt she’d been left behind. One obsession especially bothered her. “He’d play Yoko Ono and I’m telling you what, that wasn’t good with me,” she said.

“I bet I could sing better than her.”

Though Fennell concedes that Arnold was “probably not the best businessman around,” he was notorious for being able to locate any record in the store on command, despite his impaired vision. Customers would occasionally try and take advantage of him — dropping a $10 bill on the counter, thinking he’d mistake it for a $100 bill — but he rarely fell for this sort of thing. For a time, he kept a “Beatles Museum” in a room in the back of the store, but worried the ceiling would leak and destroy his prized col-

“He acted like they were a gift from heaven,” Linda remembered of that night, and as Arnold himself would later put it in an interview, “They are all gods really, at least to me.” lection, so he moved much of his rare material into an adjoining warehouse.

Rather than live in apartments, for much of his career Arnold preferred to live in his stores — typically in a back room, where he’d stash his money in the microwave.

In 1975, Fennell profiled Arnold for the Post & Courier, as an embodiment of the continued existence of “Beatlemania” in the wake of the group’s demise. Arnold’s pride (and obsessive compulsion) leapt off the page. “I have 234 different Beatles albums from 17 countries,” Arnold told him. “Along with several hundred 45s, two Beatles lunch boxes, a Beatles game, a can of Beatles Talc, two Beatles pillows, a Beatles bank and many Beatles films, posters, books, coins, bracelets, shirts, mobiles, ticket stubs, tapes of recordings not on albums, photos, slides, magazines, dolls, cards, buttons and promotion material.” Fennell himself had become drawn to the outer limits of collecting, inspired by afternoons at The Odyssey. With Arnold’s store as his exclusive distributor, he launched a Beatles-centric bootleg record label, Melvin Records, that would go on to gain an enduring cult reputation for its bizarre design aesthetic (many of its records featuring Arnold’s catchphrases in tribute) and consistently impressive archeological discoveries (live sets, phone interviews, demos and other rarities).

Meanwhile, Arnold was climbing the ranks of the Beatles fan clubs and had begun attempting to make contact with his heroes. He went to see George Harrison live in Atlanta, attended both of John Lennon’s “One to One” benefit concerts in New York City, and along with a few other fortunate super-fans, talked his way into spending two weeks in 1974 as a flyon-the-wall in Nashville, while Paul McCartney recorded a never-released Wings album called “ColdCuts.” As Arnold later told an interviewer, “I

was aggressive enough to be at the right places at the right time, that’s all.”

Friends recall Arnold disappearing for weeks at a time, and returning with deliberately vague stories suggesting he’d spent time with John and Yoko in New York. As a local fan club president, he’d get offered occasional promotional opportunities, and meeting the band was apparently part of the deal. “John, you just feel in the atmosphere around you that he’s greater than you are,” Arnold told a reporter about his first visit with Lennon. “He doesn’t necessarily feel that way — you just feel that way.” And Ono? “Yoko,” he hesitated, “I just feel comfortable with. She’s very natural, normal, intelligent and intellectual. A bright lady; very bright.”

When Lennon was murdered outside his apartment in December 1980, a number of newspapers reached out to Arnold, by now an elder-statesman in the fan community, for comment.

“Who would kill him?” Arnold asked a reporter from the United Press International, whose article was syndicated all over the world. He compared the act to “killing Billy Graham.” To the Associated Press, Arnold noted his own deep depression and that of his customers, adding, “The world has been deprived of one of the four gods.”

By that time, Arnold’s collection exceeded 1,000 Beatles records from 35 different countries. In the aftermath of the band’s break-up and Lennon’s death, Arnold had discovered the great cause of his life: “My eventual goal is to one day open a Beatles museum in New York and take people on tours,” he told a reporter, who identified him as the “world’s 2nd largest collector of Beatle paraphernalia.” “Of course I could never sell or part with all my souvenirs and memorabilia,” he told her, “but I’d love to talk to people as I have talked to you.”

In the ’80s, Fred renamed his store The Prism and began increasingly to embrace the avant-garde. Friends wondered openly if Yoko Ono’s influence might be to blame. Fennell and the rest of the city’s old-school Beatlesfan community found his interest in Ono baffling, almost treasonous. “He was much more enamored with Yoko than with Lennon,” Fennell told me, still shuddering at the thought. “We found it very weird.”

The Prism became an important 19 MARCH 31, 2016 arktimes.com

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COURTESY MIKE AMMONS

THE PRISM: Arnold’s legendary record store in Charleston, S.C.

meeting place for Charleston’s emerging punk community, and Arnold enthusiastically embraced the new subculture. His employees wore facial piercings and spiked collars, and Arnold started booking shows for groups like the Dead Kennedys, developing longstanding relationships with artists like Jello Biafra, Wendy O. Williams and GG Allin. He kept a cage of live rats in the center of his store, a gimmick that appealed to his new customers. Online, you can find a number of nostalgic tributes to the ’80s Charleston punk scene, many of which cite The Prism as a crucial gateway to the underground. (Jack Hunter, a radio host and former writer and aide for Rand Paul, told me he purchased his “entire Sex Pistols record collection there when I was in high school.”)

“My eventual goal is to one day open a Beatles museum in New York and take people on tours,” he told a reporter, who identified him as the “world’s 2nd largest collector of Beatle paraphernalia.”

You can imagine the appeal of punk’s proudly outcast ethos to the albino child of a paranoid schizophrenic. For their part, the punks made Arnold into a kind of mascot, “Billy ’Bino,” and several of the online remembrances contain speculation as to the mystery of his whereabouts.

In September 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the coast of Charleston.

The Category 4 storm brought with it

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winds of up to 140 mph, and large areas of the city were devastated, Arnold’s store included. He estimated the initial inventory loss at $10,000 — the roof of the store’s warehouse was dislodged entirely in the storm. He lost electricity for two weeks, and, as he told Billboard in an interview the following month, he assumed the resulting lack of air conditioning had inflicted even further damage. Moreover, Arnold had no insurance. “I’ve been in business for over 18 years, and we never had insurance for our inventory,” Arnold said. “We hardly ever have hurricanes here. I think the last one was in 1958.”

Among the objects lost were important pieces of Arnold’s Beatles collection, artifacts of incalculable sentimental value. On top of everything else, there was the cruel fate of his favorite

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OXFORD AMERICAN AND SOUTH ON MAIN present these excellent shows in April: APRIL 1, 2016 RIVER KITTENS {AFTER-HOURS} South on Main stage. Admission is $10. You may purchase a wristband beginning at 4:00 pm.

The show begins at 9:00 pm. 501-244-9660 to make a reservation.

APRIL 5, 2016 PARKER MILLSAP 7:30 PM—South on Main stage on Tuesday, April 5 at 7:30 PM. Doors open at 5:30 PM, with dinner and drinks available for purchase at that time.

APRIL 7, 2016 RUTHIE FOSTER [ARCHETYPES & TROUBADOURS SERIES] 8:00 PM—Foster is the fourth and final show in our 2015 - 2016 Archetypes & Troubadours Series. Doors open at 6:00 PM, with dinner and drinks available for purchase at that time. This series is made possible in part by the generosity of The Summer Foundation.

APRIL 4

APRIL 5

APRIL 13

APRIL 14-16

UCA Public Appearances welcomes actor, writer and director JOSH RADNOR to Reynolds Performance Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free for students and $15 for the general public. For more info, visit uca.edu/ publicappearances.

Vegas-style entertainment comes to Little Rock for the JOKER & THE JESTER COMEDY TOUR. Justin Rivera and Jake Daniels, seen on Comedy Central and America’s Got Talent, bring laughter and magic to Vino’s. Also featuring Jay Jackson, Katrina Coleman, Paul Prater and Josh Ogle.

APRIL 1

APRIL

Verizon Arena welcomes BARRY MANILOW one last time. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $19.75-$169.75 and available through Ticketmaster. ■ Certified Cicerone Beer Server Joshua Misch of Stone Brewing will be on hand at Colonial Wines & Spirits on April 1 pouring samples of Pale Ale, Ruination IPA and Americano Espresso Stout with bottles and growlers to take home. The event is from 3-5 p.m. at Colonial Wines & Spirits at 11200 West Markham in Little Rock. ■ Ballet Arkansas’s TURNING POINTE GALA will be held on April 1 at the Little Rock Marriot Grand Ballroom with cocktails at 6:30 p.m. Dinner and performances begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $150. For tickets and more info, visit balletarkansas.org/turning-pointe. ■ THE 19TH ANNUAL FOAM FEST takes place at Dickey Stephens Park in North Little Rock from 6-9 p.m. and features food, beer and fun benefitting the Arthritis Foundation. Tickets are $40 for general admission and $65 for VIPs. ■ Oakland and Fraternal Historic Cemetery presents a TWILIGHT HISTORY TOUR, starting at 6:00 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children under 12.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author Jon Meacham will present, “THE ART OF LEADERSHIP: LESSONS FROM THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY,” at 4:30 p.m. at the UALR Stella Boyle Smith Auditorium. A reception and book signing will follow at 6 p.m. at the UALR Art Galleries.

APRIL 6

COLONIAL WINES & SPIRITS has taken your favorite Girl Scout cookies and added wine pairings. Sample both for free from 4-6 p.m. at this fun and free event. Colonial is located at 11200 West Markham in Little Rock.

Prestigious award-winners, screenwriters, comedians, artists, a yogi and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet are among the diverse roster of presenters who will be providing sessions at the 13TH ANNUAL ARKANSAS LITERARY FESTIVAL. For a list of authors and events, visit arkansasliteraryfestival.org.

PUB OR PERISH, April 16, 7-9 at Stickyz.Arkansas Times Drinking and Poetry Slam. Hosted by Justin Booth.

THROUGH APRIL 16

The delightful comedy, LEADING LADIES, is now running at Murry’s Dinner Playhouse.

Show times are Tuesday through Saturday evenings with 6 p.m. dinner and 7:30 p.m. curtain.

Sunday and Wednesday matinees are at 11 a.m. with 12:40 p.m. curtain and Sunday evening shows include a 5:30 dinner and 6:40 p.m. curtain. Visit murrysdp. com for reservations.

ARKANSAS TIMES

The Arkansas Repertory Theatre presents THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY based on the novel by Robert James Waller with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. For tickets, show times and special events, visit therep. org. LOST FORTY BEER SAMPLING at The Rep before the show. Apr. 14, 5:30 - 7pm, lobby at The Rep. Sponsored by Arkansas Times.

Wildwood Park hosts its 18TH ANNUAL WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $75 and include amazing tastings from local restaurants and more than 100 wines from Glazer’s plus live music all night. For tickets visit wildwoodpark.org. ■ JEFF FOXWORTHY and LARRY THE CABLE GUY come together for one night of comedy at Verizon Arena on April 15 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $59.50 and are available through Ticketmaster. ■ SYMPHONY DESIGNER HOUSE XXIII opens April 15 and runs through May 8 with several parties to attend: opening night Crescendo Party on April 14, Girls’ Night Out on April 28, Young Professionals Party on May 5 and Mother’s Day Brunch on May 8.

For the full schedule of events, visit arsymphonyguild.org/asog-events/asogdesigner-house. ■ OLD CHICAGO EVENT www.facebook.com/ocnlr/event.

Join us for DIAMOND CHEF ARKANSAS RECUT from 6-9 p.m. In its ninth year, Pulaski Technical College Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute presents an over-the-top culinary experience.

This fast-paced competition modeled after Iron Chef will feature chefs Bonner Cameron, Philippe Ducrot, Donnie Ferneau, Jason Knapp, Angela Nix and Justin Patterson in one action packed evening filled with fantastic food and fun. Tickets are $125 and available at pulaskitech.edu/DiamondChef. ■ Arkansas Baptist College presents SUPPER & SOUL at 6 p.m. at the Metroplex Center on Colonial Glenn Road. The event includes a silent auction, live music by the Bar-Kays and Lakeside and dinner. To RSVP, call Vevae Lucas at 501-420-1206 or email development@arkansasbaptist.edu.

APRIL 30

THE 15TH ANNUAL OZARK FOOTHILLS FILM FESTIVAL takes place in Batesville. This year’s lineup includes nine features and 28 Arkansas premieres. Tickets are $5 for general admission, or $25 for an all-movie pass.

For a full schedule of events, visit ozarkfoothillsfilmfest.org.

APRIL 8-MAY 1

APRIL 15

CARRIE UNDERWOOD performs live at Verizon Arena at 7 p.m. Tickets are $62 and $93.50 and are available through Ticketmaster.

MARCH 31, 2016

MUMFORD & SONS play Verizon Arena at 8 p.m. Tickets are $59.50 and are available through Ticketmaster.

APRIL 21

APRIL 28

22

APRIL 7

APRIL 1-2 AND APRIL 8-9

APRIL 22

Little Rock’s SoMa district is now the place to be on Friday nights for Fourth Fridays. Local shops stay open late from 5-9 p.m.

Don’t miss PAUL MCCARTNEY live at Verizon Arena at 8 p.m. The Paul McCartney live experience promises to unveil a dazzling set, dozens of classics from the most beloved catalog in popular music, spanning Paul’s entire career as a solo artist, member of Wings and of course as a Beatle, and no shortage of surprises. Tickets are $42.50-$280 and available through Ticketmaster.

APRIL 8

Hop on the free trolley, and see where the 2ND FRIDAY ART NIGHT takes you. From 5-8 p.m., pop into participating galleries like the Historic Arkansas Museum, Cox Creative Center and Butler Center Galleries.

Food, Music, Entertainment and everything else that’s

FUN! APRIL 2

The first annual SPRINGFEST takes place from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. in Little Rock with family friendly activities like a 5K Fun Run, Ruff on the River pooch parade, short legged dog races, a steak cookoff plus music by Trout Fishing in America. The event is free. For more info, visit riverfestarkansas. com/springfest. ■ The largest gathering of health care professionals takes place on April 2 at the THINK NURSE ANNUAL NURSING EXPO at the JACK STEPHENS CENTER on the UALR Campus from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. For details, visit thinknurse.com/ whats-going-on/annual-nursing-expo.

APRIL 9-10

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Season Finale, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 with Ted Ludwig on guitar takes place at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $19-$58. Saturday’s performance is at 7:30 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 3 p.m. For tickets, visit arkansassymphony.org.

APRIL 10

THE JEWISH FOOD FESTIVAL takes place at War Memorial Stadium from 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Admission is free.

APRIL 16

KENT WALKER ARTISAN CHEESE is throwing a block party from 5-10 p.m. Located on Cross Street in downtown Little Rock, the event will include live music, food by Southern Gourmasian, Loblolly Creamery and more with Diamond Bear, Lost Forty, Stone’s Throw and other local brews.

Admission is $1. Children are free. Rain or shine event. ■ UCA Public Appearances presents DISNEY IN CONCERT: THE MUSIC FROM THE MOVIES at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $30-$40 and available online at tickets.uca.edu. ■ Take a little drive through the Delta with Arkansas Times for the 13th ANNUAL JUKE JOINT FESTIVAL in Clarksdale, Mississippi, with dozens of daytime music stages with the best blues you’ll find anywhere. For a complete schedule of events, visit jukejointfestival.com, or call Kelly at 375-2985 for details. ■ Dance the night away at PARTY WITH A HEART, A GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT dance party from 8-11 p.m. at Argenta Community Theater in North Little Rock. For tickets, visit partywithaheart.org/tickets. Food and refreshments included. Proceeds benefit P.A.T.H.

APRIL 23

The Green Corner Store & Soda Fountain hosts its annual Earth Day celebration from 12-4 p.m. Enjoy the work of local leaders and organizations with vendors, demonstrations, food trucks, live music and more. The event takes place at Bernice Garden. ■ 100.3 The Edge presents The Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair at Verizon Arena on April 23. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $70 and $91.50 and are available through Ticketmaster. ■ Arkansas Heart Foundation is pleased to be once again hosting the CARDIAC CLASSIC BIKE RIDE on Saturday, April 23. To register: arkansasheartfoundation.org

APRIL 26-29

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation are excited to host the EDUCATION, WORKFORCE, AND INNOVATION NATIONAL STUDENT SUCCESS CONFERENCE (eWINS), formerly known as the African American Male Initiative Consortium Conference, in Little Rock. For more information, visit ualr.edu/ studentsuccess/ewins.

THROUGH MAY 8

Two exhibitions: “INDUSTRIAL BEAUTY: CHARLES BURCHFIELD’S BLACK IRON” and “DOROTHEA LANGE’S AMERICA” are on display at the Arkansas Arts Center.

Burchfield is best known as one of America’s outstanding modern watercolorists. Dorothea Lange’s America brings together many of the photographer’s images from the 1930s. For more, visit arkarts.com.

artisan jewelry, handmade gifts, & local art pets. “When the hurricane came, the rats died in the flood,” Durst told me.

“It was a sad day for him.” *** ARNOLD’S UNCLE, CECIL, still lived in Colorado, and after the hurricane had stalled his South Carolina prospects, Arnold decided he would try his luck out west. Cecil’s career had taken many unexpected turns since his days in the circus with Arnold’s mother.

He had appeared (often uncredited) in a number of Hollywood films, his favorite being the 1957 Civil War epic “Raintree County,” starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, though his acting career had been derailed by his discovery of the Rubik’s Cube in the early 1980s. He became fanatical, fine-tuning his technique until he could finish the puzzle in 66 seconds flat. He eventually coined the term “Cubeology,” which in self-published books he defined as the “study of a three dimensional cube puzzle.”

From 1988 to 1991, in Grand Junction, Colo., Cecil owned and operated the country’s first Rubik’s Cube Museum, selections from which are now part of the collection at the Smithsonian.

(Whether Arnold and Cecil discussed their shared neurotic drives to collect and catalog is unclear — when I spoke to Cecil recently, the coincidence struck him as wholly unremarkable.)

Joining his uncle in Grand Junction, Arnold did the only thing he could think to do: He opened a new store, this one called CD and Video Exchange. He would spend only a few years in Grand Junction, but they would prove to be decisive years — more specifically, they would prove to be the years of his undoing.

I asked a number of Arnold’s friends and family members about the nature of the incident that led to his lifetime inclusion on the sex offender registry, and heard a number of different explanations, ranging from the benign to the more serious but hazily imprecise. I turned instead to the Grand Junction Police Department. From the police, I learned that Arnold was arrested in 1991 on charges of “Inducement of Child Prostitution.” According to the incident report, Arnold behaved suggestively toward a 16-year-old boy,

who had come into the store looking for a job. Arnold “let him look at the pornographic magazines,” the report says, and allegedly asked if he could videotape him masturbating. Later the boy reported Arnold to the police, who searched the store and arrested him. Looking through a stack of job applications on the counter, the officer noted, “There were hardly any female names.”

“Fred didn’t like to talk about that part of his story for obvious reasons,” Durst said, though he understands it was the major impediment to Arnold’s receiving help when he needed it later in life. “When I would try and get someone to help him, most were reluctant because of his background. [But] the fact that he was on the sex offender list does not minimize his worth as a person.” Little Rock homeless shelters are, as a rule, generally not available to registered sex offenders: “To my knowledge there is not a shelter in town (or even the entire state, for that matter) that will accept any sex offender,” Aaron Reddin, founder of the homeless outreach nonprofit The One Inc., told me.

Mote, who didn’t know the specifics of Arnold’s record, referred to this as “the bad part of his world,” though he stressed that he never saw or heard of Arnold offending anyone here in town.

Officer Ray Moreno, who knew Arnold from the neighborhood, agreed. “He didn’t bother anybody,” he said. “He left people alone.”

It’s fruitless to speculate about the sexuality of the deceased, though one close family member told me Arnold self-identified as gay. In a 2014 letter to a Pulaski County Circuit Court judge, pleading to be allowed to return to live at The Cottages with his sister, Arnold referred to the Colorado incident as “one nonviolent offense” more than two decades ago, arguing, “I have done nothing to justify a lifetime registry.” He also included the contact information for a cardiologist he’d consulted after his most recent stroke, a doctor he claimed could “tell you that I am unable to have sex because of my heart.” According to his nephew Mike, Arnold was also HIV positive. Mike said he’d learned this from Officer Moreno, who, when I asked, explained, “When a person is identified as HIV positive, anytime we

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DEAR YOKO: Arnold with Yoko Ono in New York City.

get a call that involves them, we are alerted to that.”

Mote had initially insisted that Arnold’s death was “nothing but an accident,” but the longer we spoke, he admitted that he could imagine a potential scenario in which Arnold had simply given up. “Living where he did and how he did, it seemed like everything was against him,” he said. Arnold’s nephew Mike was blunter in his assessment. “I think he done it on purpose,” he said of the collision. “He’s been blind all his life. He’s made it around New York City, Russia, all kinds of places. But he ain’t never got run over before, know what I’m saying?” ***

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READING DURST’S FIRST EMAIL, I had made the immediate assumption that Arnold had exaggerated his relationship with Yoko Ono to some degree

“He’s been blind all his life.

He’s made it around New York City, Russia, all kinds of places. But he ain’t never got run over before, know what I’m saying?” or another. It even seemed plausible that he might have imagined it entirely — the delusion of a lonely person who had long been excommunicated from official society. Certain of his old friends seemed to confirm this impression with mild skepticism of their own.

Perhaps the two had met once very briefly in the context of some longago fan club arrangement, I thought, and Arnold had sustained a one-sided friendship over the ensuing decades.

But, as it happens, I was wrong.

Among the dusty photo albums at Mike and Linda’s apartment were several candid photographs of Ono hang-

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ing out at what looked like a recording studio or backstage area; in one of them, Arnold and Ono posed together.

Days later, Durst forwarded me a letter from Ono’s attorney, which confirmed their relationship and inquired about the whereabouts of “certain recordings” that “Mr. Arnold had always mentioned to Ms. Ono.” Even Yoko Ono, it appeared, was curious about the status of Arnold’s never-to-becompleted Beatles Museum, the state of which remains one of the unsolved mysteries of Fred Arnold’s life.

I reached out to Ono herself, through her attorney, and after several weeks of alternately encouraging and discouraging messages from her understandably cautious legal representative, I was permitted to ask her about her relationship with Arnold.

“Yes, he was a sweet friend,” she wrote me. “He loved my work and always encouraged me to do more.” She added

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that “Fred did send me letters from time to time, [though] we didn’t really see each other in later years.” I asked if she had been aware of his living situation in Little Rock, and she confirmed that she had been. “I didn’t think he wanted to talk about being homeless so much,” she said. “He was a very proud and artistic person.”

Nevertheless, I learned also that Ono had supported him financially in his final years — to a life-saving extent. Durst sent me a photocopy of a 2009 check made out to Arnold from the account of “Yoko Ono Lennon,” in the amount of $10,000. Mike told me he’d seen others just like it.

During his last years, when he’d had no place to live or sleep, he’d at least had Yoko Ono. “Dear Fred,” Ono had written on an accompanying note to the 2009 check, “Here’s your microwave oven and more. Have fun. Lots of love, Yoko.”

25 MARCH 31, 2016 arktimes.com

Arts Entertainment AND

I

t helps to think of the “God’s Not Dead” film series as essentially “The Vagina Monologues” for evangelical Christians. Here in the United States, Eve Ensler and other writers and activists have long worked to get women to talk openly about their bodies, using that v-word that causes so much cultural discomfort.

Well, in the world of “God’s Not Dead 2,” respectable people simply don’t say the g-word in public, don’t talk openly about their God or their Jesus or their Savior — whatever you want to call it. So when high school history teacher Grace Wesley (Melissa Joan Hart) fields an innocent question about her God from a student and dares to answer it openly, without employing any cute little euphemism, school officials are naturally scandalized and threaten to discipline her. But Grace is not ashamed of her God. Her God is beautiful. Her God is powerful. Most importantly, her God is not a dry, dusty, dead thing. Her God is vibrant and alive, and she’s going to court to show the world that her God can take all the thrusts and jabs from these hateful men and come back for more. OK, that was a little snarky. Let’s try again ... .

If you are not part of the evangelical Christian crowd at whom this movie is aimed, the story will likely feel as if set in some alternate reality, a parallel dimension so different from our world, despite its surface similarities.

What kicks off the plot is a question

by Brooke Thawley (Hayley Orrantia), a student at Martin Luther King Jr. High School, about the religious origins of MLK’s commitment to nonviolence. Grace’s answer incorporates a few lines of scripture, specifically Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies — a perfectly legitimate and historically accurate answer — but this lands her in hot water with the school board. “Do you believe that your response was in line with district policy?” they ask her, apparently believing it possible to teach history without any reference to religion, which must mean that their curriculum includes nothing on the Middle Ages. Even Richard Dawkins, in “The God Delusion,” acknowledged the role of the Bible in Western history and culture and the necessity of studying it for certain disciplines.

26

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

THE ‘G’ WORD 2: “God’s Not Dead 2,” filmed in Little Rock, aims to rally the evangelical crowd.

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS We watched “God’s Not Dead 2” so you wouldn’t have to.

BY GUY LANCASTER

The school board nevertheless demands an apology from Grace, and when none is forthcoming, they vote to suspend her and threaten the revocation of her teaching certificate. Wanting her gone but not wanting to fire her himself, the head of the school board contacts American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Pete Kane (played by Ray Wise, whose performance here is

much less subtle than what he offered in “Robocop”). Kane approaches Brooke’s freethinking parents to lure them into suing the school district, apparently for allowing someone like Grace to expose their child to religion in the first place. Kane assures the parents that if Brooke participates in such a trial, “she’ll be able to get into any Ivy League school she wants,” because in this world no Ivy League university has a religious affiliation or a divinity program. (They specifically want her to go to Stanford, apparently ignorant of the fact that Stanford Memorial Church lies at the heart of campus.)

Handsome young lawyer Tom Endler (Jesse Metcalfe) takes Grace’s case, but once he enters the picture, Grace takes a back seat in the narrative; having set this reaction in motion, she pretty much retires from the story.

Melissa Joan Hart is largely reduced to looking out of her depth in the courtroom of Judge Stennis (Ernie Hudson of “Ghostbusters” fame) while the men take charge. Tom’s strategy relies upon proving the historicity of Jesus, because, after all, if Jesus was a real historical figure, then mentioning him in a history class can be no sin against “district policy.” This allows him to bring in a few real-life people, such as J. Warner Wallace, author

of “Cold Case Christianity,” to testify in every sense of that word. Thus is the whole story revealed for the shallow conceit that it is. Most courtroom dramas entail the discovery of truth from within a finely crafted web of deceit, with heroic lawyers employing an array of legal and psychological maneuvers in order to secure justice for their clients. But in this movie, the courtroom simply provides the setting for letting Christians lecture about Jesus. There is no drama. There is no tension — and not just because the title of the movie rather gives away the verdict.

Though it scarcely seems possible, “God’s Not Dead 2” features characters even more two-dimensional than did the first movie. In that one, atheist philosophy professor Jeffrey Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) requires that all his first-year students write “God Is Dead” on a piece of paper and sign it, thus representing every arrogant and hostile stereotype of a university academic regularly peddled in Sunday sermons.

But even he had at least a little back story, the death of his mother when he was 12 having contributed to his hatred of religion. In the sequel, however, Radisson’s villainous successor, the symbolically named Pete Kane, exhibits a hatred of Christianity that

ROCK CANDY

Check out the Times’ A&E blog arktimes.com

A&E NEWS comes ex nihilo. The good people are inescapably good, the bad ineffably bad, and nary a cliche goes unspoken by either party.

Of course, this movie holds a local significance, having been filmed in Central Arkansas between May and September last year. Aerial shots of the capital city occur throughout the movie, typically focusing upon the State Capitol, where part of the movie was filmed. At the March 14 world premiere at Riverdale 10 Cinema, Hart recalled “going up those marble steps, in heels, for take after take.” However, her stay in Little Rock was not limited to work. “I’m not normally a runner,” she said, “but every morning, I’d run along the River Trail,” adding that she also enjoyed the town’s nightlife, museums and cuisine. Indeed, the food seemed a particular focus of those involved, with producer Brittany Lefebvre singling out Flying Saucer’s rocket tots as her favorite; Little Rock restaurant The Fold Botanas and Bar makes a brief appearance in the film.

Other area film locations include the Pulaski County Courthouse, Benton High School, Hillcrest and downtown, where one can see through an office window the occasional trolley.

According to director Harold Cronk, a friend of his in Bentonville suggested he consider filming in Arkansas when he began work on the sequel. “The location fit perfectly,” he said. “Arkansas is really a cinematic, film-friendly area, and the state has a level of hospitality that I’ve never seen elsewhere.”

He added that while his calls to state film commissions usually result in conversations with lower-level functionaries, Christopher Crane, head of the Arkansas Film Commission, “met us personally at the airport and even took us to meet with the governor.” Former Gov. Mike Huckabee even makes a cameo as himself in the film, leading a talk show discussion about the Wesley case.

There is an unquestionable irony in the fact that the state supported a religiously oriented movie about ostensible state hostility toward religious expression. If, as “God’s Not Dead 2” wants you to believe, government seeks to suppress any mention of Jesus, would not the experience of

LOOKING AHEAD IN the Arkansas Times Film Series: At Riverdale 10 Cinema on April 19, we’re screening William Friedkin’s 1977 cult classic “Sorcerer,” starring Roy Scheider and soundtracked hypnotically and brilliantly by Tangerine Dream.

Friedkin’s follow-up to the massively successful “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist,” “Sorcerer” is a much stranger and more ambitious film, influenced — the director has claimed — by Werner Herzog and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Overlooked by many critics at the time, Roger Ebert judged it one of the top 10 films of 1977, and its reputation has only grown over the years — Quentin Tarantino named it among his 12 favorite films in 2012 and Stephen King placed it at No. 1 on a list of “20 movies that never disappoint.”

“A READERS’ MAP OF Arkansas,” a new and revised edition of the map published in 1994 by the late poet C.D. Wright, has been completed by a committee of local writers, professors and librarians, and will be released (online and in print) at this year’s Arkansas Literary Festival, with an official unveiling to be held at the Oxford American Annex at 6:30 p.m.

April 21. The map highlights writers of all genres and historical eras, updating the original effort, which (bafflingly) left off such local luminaries as Charles Portis.

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THE FANTASTIC CINEMA & Craft Beer Festival, presented by the Little Rock Film Society and highlighting the best in independent genre film (sci-fi, horror and fantasy), returns April 7-10 to Riverdale 10 Cinema. Individual tickets cost $10, day passes are $20, “film fanatic” passes (allowing access to all screenings) are $40 and VIP passes (which include priority seating, plus all panels, parties and the filmmaker lounge) are $100. More information about ticketing (and the lineup) is at fantasticcinema.com.

THE ARGENTA COMMUNITY Theater has announced the new “Dogtown Film Series,” which will feature screenings of old (“Citizen Kane,” “2001: A Space Odyssey”) and new (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”). All screenings will be $5 and the series will start with the “Star Wars” screening at 7 p.m. April 14.

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MARCH 31, 2016

27

THE TO-DO

LIST

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK AND WILL STEPHENSON

FRIDAY 4/1

FRIDAY 4/1

BARRY MANILOW

LOUISIANA SOUL REVIVAL WITH DOUG DUFFEY

7:30 p.m. Verizon Arena. $19.75-$169.75.

Muses a nd creat ive sparks can come in all manner of shapes and sizes, and for Barry Manilow it came in the form of State Farm Insurance. Imagine him at his piano struggling with the tune, deadline approaching, taking occasional swigs from a bottle of bourbon as the lyrics just won’t come. And then — and who knows what stores of childhood memories he drew on at the last possible moment to pull this out — they did: “Like a good neighbor,” he wrote, wiping the tears from his eyes, “State Farm is there.”

A smile, a nod, a paycheck.

He didn’t stop there. Do the words, “I am stuck on BandAid brand, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me,” mean anything to you? Thanks again, Barry.

There were jingles for Pepsi, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dr Pepper, McDonald’s, Tab. He soundtracked so many of our earliest encounters with raw capitalism that it could be hard to distinguish his face from its innermost machinations — he’s a born salesman, with good hair and a trustworthy smile. Manilow won more Clio Awards than Don Draper, and yet he still walked away, more or less. He teamed up with like-minded folks — a lounge-friendly, crowdpleasing, smooth-voiced, TVready crew that included Bette Midler and Tony Orlando and Donna Summer — and wrote and performed some of the least offensive, most medicinally soothing orchestral pop of the 1970s. He did great work! He could laugh at himself. He famously sunbathed in the nude. Moreover, listen to his 1974 single “Mandy” and tell me it doesn’t give you chills. Look me in the eye and try telling me that much. WS 28

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

9 p.m. White Water Tavern. $10.

Doug Duffey is a Louisiana music legend who has collaborated with George Clinton, Keith Richards, Herbie Hancock, David Byrne and many

more (“One of the most prolific songwriters living in Louisiana,” is the line frequently quoted, though I wasn’t able to locate its original source — a fact that probably only confirms its longevity as a cornerstone of his reputation). He was inducted into the National Blues Hall

of Fame in 2009, at which ceremony he was dubbed the “Louisiana Ambassador of the Blues.” These days he performs with a group called the Louisiana Soul Revival, which is less a backing band than a full-on, 11-piece, Frenchman Street-style funk ensemble. WS

BATESVILLE CINEMA: The 15th Annual Ozark Foothills FilmFest includes features and documentaries like (clockwise, from top left) “120 Days,” “The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead,” “Death on a Rock” and “The Mystery of Picasso.”

FRIDAY 4/1-SATURDAY 4/9

OZARK FOOTHILLS FILM FESTIVAL

Various times. University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville and Lyon College. $25.

“We’re not the biggest, in fact we may well be the smallest, but we’re indisputably one of the best film festivals in the country.” That’s what Bob Pest, founder of the Ozark Foothills FilmFest, told the Times in 2011, and in the last five years the event has only grown both in proportion and all-around reputability.

This year’s 15th annual event promises to continue the trend, with screenings of

a truly diverse array of features and documentaries, shorts and animation. There are films from Sweden, Spain, Russia, France, Hungary and, of course, Arkansas. Highlights include Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 epic “The Mystery of Picasso,” winner of the 1956 Cannes Film Festival jury prize and often cited as one of the best films about art every made.

Unavailable for over a decade for various rights- and tech-related issues, you can now see it in Batesville. There’s also Zack Godshall’s acclaimed documentary “Water Like Stone,” about the people who make a home and a living among the disappearing wetlands of Louisiana.

There’s Ted Roach’s “120 Days,” about an undocumented immigrant facing deportation, which the Huffington Post called “required viewing for every American.”

There’s Scott Ballard’s feature “Death on a Rock,” a lyrical character study that recently took prizes at the L.A. Indie Film Fest, and “The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead,” which the Oscar-winning animator John Canemaker described as “Laurel and Hardy in hell.” Screenings will be interspersed with filmmaker panels, parties and other special events. Individual screenings are $5 and the full “Red-Eye” movie pass will run you $25. WS

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 3/31 The University of Arkansas at Little Rock hosts “An Evening with Poet Gary McDowell” at its Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, 5:30 p.m., free. Filmmaker and Little Rock native Jeff Nichols will present his new film “Midnight Special” at the Ron Robinson Theater at 6 p.m., $75-$100 (all proceeds go to the Arkansas Motion Picture Institute and Central High School Tiger Foundation). Comedian Steve Hirst is at the Loony Bin at 7:30 p.m., $8 (and at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, $12). Local Americana duo A Rowdy Faith performs at The Joint at 7:30 p.m., $10. Metal groups Aborning, GoreMonger, All Is at an End and B-Slammin perform at Vino’s at 8 p.m., $5.

SATURDAY 4/2

SPRINGFEST

10 a.m. Riverfront Park. Free.

Riverfest, the nearly four decades-old arts festival held each year on Memorial Day weekend, has changed things up this year, separating the music portion of the event (which will be held June 3-5, featuring The Flaming Lips, George Clinton and many more) from the familyfriendly, all-day games and crafts portion. For the latter, we now have Springfest. Kicking off at 9 a.m., there will be a 5K Fun Run, the alwaysthought-provoking “Ruff on the River Pooch Parade” (the theme of which, this year, we’ve learned is “Woofstock,” FYI), short-legged dog races, dogs jumping off docks, arts & crafts activities for kids, food trucks, local craft beer, Etsy vendors and more. More, in this case, meaning a performance by perennial children’s music favorites Trout Fishing in America and various demonstrations put on by the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center staff. WS

HOW HE MET YOUR MOTHER: Actor and filmmaker Josh Radnor speaks at UCA's Reynolds Performance Hall in Conway, 7:30 p.m. Monday, $15.

FRIDAY 4/1

TUESDAY 4/5

WEDNESDAY 4/6

Becca Stevens, author and founder of Thistle Farms, gives a talk titled “Love Is Good Business,” 6 p.m. at the Clinton School for Public Service’s Sturgis Hall. Little Rock sketch comedy troupe Red Octopus Theater performs its new original production, “Make Spring Great Again,” at the Public Theatre (Fridays and Saturdays through April 9), 8 p.m., $10. Adam Faucett and the Tall Grass play at Maxine’s in Hot Springs with Open Fields and Claire Morales, 9 p.m., $5. St. Louis folk trio River Kittens plays at South on Main at 9 p.m., $10.

Nashville EDM DJ Wick-It the Instigator performs at Revolution at 9 p.m., $10. Grateful Dead tribute act The Stolen Faces plays at Stickyz at 9:30 p.m., $8. Beloved alt-country group Lucero play at Fayetteville’s George’s Majestic Lounge at 9:30 p.m., $22.

JON MEACHAM

BERNARD KINSEY

SATURDAY 4/2

If you think you’re sick of hearing about the presidency, imagine how Jon Meacham must feel. Executive editor (and vice president) of Random House and former editor-in-chief of Newsweek, he’s spent over a decade writing critically acclaimed nonfiction tomes about U.S. presidents new and old: “Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship,” “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation,” “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power” and, most recently, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” released last year. His biography of Andrew Jackson won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, so we’ll presume he knows his stuff. In addition to his already very full-sounding plate (a James Franco-level feat of implausible multitasking), Meacham is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and holds six honorary doctorates, including one from Yale. Congrats, Jon Meacham, on possessing the most dauntingly impressive Wikipedia page I’ve encountered in weeks. WS

In advance of the Kinsey Collection exhibition that opens April 8 at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, businessman, philanthropist and collector of African-American art and artifacts Bernard Kinsey will give a talk about the nationally touring show. Kinsey is president and founder of the management consultant firm KBK Enterprises and is considered a pioneer in breaking racial barriers to corporate employment thanks to his leadership of the Xerox Black Employees Association during his 20-year tenure with Xerox. He and his wife, Shirley, amassed the collection, which includes documents, artwork and artifacts, some dating to 1600. The California couple are also founders of the Bernard and Shirley Kinsey Foundation for the Arts and Education. “African American Treasures from the Kinsey Collection” runs through July 2 at Mosaic Templars. LNP

The Walk to Defeat ALS begins at the Clinton Presidential Center at 7 a.m. CALS Con, featuring cosplay contests, LEGO builds, tabletop gaming and panels on Marvel, Star Trek, Studio Ghibli and Disney, is at the Main Library starting at 10 a.m., free. The City of Little Rock Career Fair kicks off at the Statehouse Convention Center at 10 a.m., free. Verizon Arena hosts Winter Jam 2016 at 5:45 p.m., $10. Fleetwood Mac tribute band Rumours performs at Revolution at 8 p.m., $10-$20. Folk singer-songwriter Dana Louise and her group The Glorious Birds play at White Water at 9 p.m. Little Rock indie-pop group Brothers and Company plays at Stickyz with The Band Camino and Kyle Jackson, 9 p.m., $10.

MONDAY 4/4

JOSH RADNOR

7:30 p.m. Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA. $15.

The second and final lecturer in the University of Central Arkansas’s “Distinguished Lecture Series” (the first was Bill Nye), Josh Radnor — best known as the protagonist of the CBS sitcom/shaggy dog story “How I Met Your Mother” — will appear at Reynolds Performance Hall on Monday. Asked about the nature of his appearance — stand-up comedy? one-man show? — UCA representatives told me, “He will be talking about his career so far as an actor, writer and director.” Less well-known than his sitcom successes are his triumphs as a filmmaker: He directed and starred in the 2010 comedy-drama “Happythankyoumoreplease,” which won the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, and the 2012 indie comedy “Liberal Arts,” co-starring Elizabeth Olsen, which Roger Ebert called “an almost unreasonable pleasure.” (That was a compliment.) Radnor has also appeared on Broadway and is a strident proponent — only somewhat surprisingly — of Transcendental Meditation. WS

4:30 p.m. Sturgis Hall. Free.

Noon. Clinton School of Public Service. Free.

www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2016

29

AFTER DARK All events are in the Greater Little Rock area unless otherwise noted. To place an event in the Arkansas Times calendar, please email the listing and all pertinent information, including date, time, location, price and contact information, to calendar@arktimes.com.

5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

DANCE

Ballroom dancing. Free lessons begin at 7 p.m.

Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 8-11 p.m., $7-$13. 12th and Cleveland streets. 501221-7568. www.blsdance.org.

Contra Dance. Park Hill Presbyterian Church, 7:30 p.m., $5. 3520 JFK Blvd., NLR. arkansascountrydance.org.

THURSDAY, MARCH 31

MUSIC

Aborning, GoreMonger, All Is At An End, B-Slammin. Vino’s, 8 p.m., $5. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

“Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m.

Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Open Jam. Thirst n’ Howl, 8 p.m. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com.

Open jam with The Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994.

Paul Shaffer. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8:30 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www. afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

RockUsaurus. Casa Mexicana, 7:30 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876.

A Rowdy Faith. The Joint, 7:30 p.m., $10. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Tatiana Roitmann, Cindy Wu. Piano and violin.

Harding University, 7 p.m., $3. 900 E. Center Ave., Searcy.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com/.

Tragikly White (headliner), Byron (happy hour).

Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

COMEDY

Steve Hirst. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., $8. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www. loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

#ArkiePubTrivia. Stone’s Throw Brewing, 6:30 p.m. 402 E. 9th St. 501-244-9154.

FILM

An Evening With Director Jeff Nichols.

Filmmaker and Little Rock native Jeff Nichols presents his new film, “Midnight Special.” All proceeds go to the Arkansas Motion Picture Institute and Central High School Tiger Foundation. Ron Robinson Theater, 6 p.m., $75$100. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www.cals.lib. ar.us/ron-robinson-theater.aspx.

POETRY

An Evening With Poet Gary McDowell. UALR, Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, 5:30 p.m., free.

2801 S. University Ave. 501-569-8977.

SPORTS

Horse Racing. Oaklawn Park: 1:30 p.m., $2.50$4.50. 2705 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-6234411. www.oaklawn.com.

30

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

EVENTS

Arkansas Suicide Prevention Network Meeting.

UALR, 10 a.m. 2801 S. University Ave. 501-5698977.

LGBTQ/SGL weekly meeting. Diverse Youth for Social Change is a group for LGBTQ/SGL and straight ally youth and young adults age 14 to 23. For more information, call 501-2449690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. LGBTQ/ SGL Youth and Young Adult Group, 6:30 p.m.

800 Scott St. RAUNCH FOLK: St. Louis Americana trio and self-described “raunch folk” group River Kittens perform at South on Main at 9 p.m. Friday, $10.

FRIDAY, APRIL 1

MUSIC

Adam Faucett and the Tall Grass, Open Fields, Claire Morales. Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $5.

700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.maxinespub.com.

All In Fridays. Envy. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road.

501-562-3317.

Barry Manilow. With special guest Dave Koz. Verizon Arena, 7:30 p.m., $19.75-$169.75. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com.

Intruders. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www. afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

Katmandu (headliner), Richie Johnson (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Louisiana Soul Revival with Doug Duffey, Good Foot. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $10.

2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

Lucero. George’s Majestic Lounge, 9:30 p.m., $22. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-4424226.

Ozark Shaman, Giant on the Mountain, Krisgrav, Amounkst the Trees. Vino’s, 8 p.m.

923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

River Kittens. South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain.com.

Route 66. Agora Conference and Special Event Center, 6:30 p.m., $5. 705 E. Siebenmorgan, Conway.

Salsa Dancing. Clear Channel Metroplex, 9 p.m., $5-$10. 10800 Col. Glenn Road. 501-217-5113. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

The Stolen Faces. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9:30 p.m., $8. 107 River Market Ave. 501372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

The Swingles. Walton Arts Center, 8 p.m., $10.

495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com/.

Upscale Friday. IV Corners, 7 p.m. 824 W. Capitol Ave. Wick-It the Instigator. Revolution, 9 p.m., $10.

300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www. rumbarevolution.com/new.

COMEDY

“Little Rock and a Hard Place.” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

“Make Spring Great Again.” A new original sketch comedy show by Little Rock’s Red Octopus Theater. The Public Theatre, through April 9: 8 p.m., $10. 616 Center St. 501-374-7529. www.thepublictheatre.com.

Steve Hirst. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $12. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-

TUESDAY WINE DAY

15% OFF

Excluding wines already on sale!

2516 Cantrell Road Riverdale Shopping Center

366-4406

FILM

Ozark Foothills Film Festival. A film festival featuring narrative and documentary features and shorts, with filmmaker panels and special events.

University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville, through April 9:, $25. 2005 White Drive, Batesville. 870-612-2000. www.uaccb.edu/.

LECTURES

“Love Is Good Business.” A talk by Becca Stevens, author and founder of Thistle Farms. Sturgis Hall, 6 p.m. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

SPORTS

Horse Racing. Oaklawn Park: 1:30 p.m., $2.50$4.50. 2705 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-6234411. www.oaklawn.com.

SATURDAY, APRIL 2

MUSIC

Brothers and Company, The Band Camino, Kyle Jackson. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $10. 107 River Market Ave. 501372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

Dana Louise & The Glorious Birds. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www. whitewatertavern.com.

Flatland Funk Donors. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

Hip-Hop Showcase. Maxine’s, 9 p.m. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.maxinespub.com.

K.I.S.S. Saturdays. Featuring DJ Silky Slim. Dress code enforced. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana.

501-492-9802.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Pickin’ Porch. Bring your instrument. All ages welcome. Faulkner County Library, 9:30 a.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org.

Rumours (Fleetwood Mac Tribute). Revolution, 8 p.m., $10-$20. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com/.

Winter Jam 2016. Verizon Arena, 5:45 p.m., $10.

1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com.

COMEDY

“Little Rock and a Hard Place.” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

“Make Spring Great Again.” See April 1.

Steve Hirst. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $12. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

Arkansas Heritage Farm grand opening. Little Rock Zoo, $12.95. 1 Jonesboro Dr. 501-666-2406. www.littlerockzoo.com.

CALS Con. With cosplay contests, LEGO builds, tabletop gaming and panels on Marvel, Star Trek, Stugio Ghibli and Disney. Main Library, 10 a.m., free. 100 S. Rock St. www.cals.lib.ar.us.

City of Little Rock Career Fair. Statehouse Convention Center, 10 a.m., free. 7 Statehouse Plaza.

Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd.

Historic Neighborhoods Tour. Bike tour of historic neighborhoods includes bike, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 9 a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

Springfest. A family-friendly event featuring arts and crafts, a 5K, the Ruff on the River Pooch Parade, food trucks and more. Riverfront Park, 10 a.m., free. 400 President Clinton Avenue.

FILM

Ozark Foothills Film Festival. See April 1.

SPORTS

Horse Racing. Oaklawn Park: 1 p.m., $2.50-$4.50.

2705 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-4411. www.oaklawn.com.

BENEFITS

Walk to Defeat ALS. Clinton Presidential Center, 7 a.m. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 370-8000. www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org.

BOOKS

Talya Boerner. A book signing and talk by the author of “The Accidental Salvation of Gracie Lee.” WordsWorth Books & Co., 3 p.m. 5920 R St. 501-663-9198. www.wordsworthbooks.org.

SUNDAY, APRIL 3

MUSIC

Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road.

501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Mothership, Seahag. Vino’s, 7 p.m., $6. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

EVENTS

Artists for Recovery. Located in the Wesley Room, a secular recovery group for people with addictions, open to the public. Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, 10 a.m. 1601 S. Louisiana.

Pilgrimage for Peace. Heifer Village, 2 p.m., free. 1 World Ave. 501-376-6836. heifer.org/ heifervillage.

Tea & ‘Tiques Meet and Greet. Esse Purse Museum & Store, 11 a.m., $10. 1510 Main St.

501-916-9022.

372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

SPORTS

Horse Racing. Oaklawn Park: 1:30 p.m., $2.50$4.50. 2705 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-6234411. www.oaklawn.com.

EVENTS

Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd.com/ stores/littlerock.

LECTURES

MONDAY, APRIL 4

MUSIC

Dr. Dog. George’s Majestic Lounge, 8:30 p.m., $20. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-4424226.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Monday Night Jazz. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., $5. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

Open Mic. The Lobby Bar. Studio Theatre, 8 p.m. 320 W. 7th St. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

EVENTS

Josh Radnor. Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, 7:30 p.m., $15. 350 S. Donaghey, Conway.

TUESDAY, APRIL 5

MUSIC

Gil Franklin & Friends. Holiday Inn, North Little Rock, first Tuesday, Wednesday of every month.

120 W. Pershing Blvd., NLR. Jeff Ling. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

JJ Grey & Mofro. George’s Majestic Lounge, 8:30 p.m., $25. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville.

479-442-4226.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

The Lowest Pair. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $10. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

Music Jam. Hosted by Elliott Griffen and Joseph Fuller. The Joint, 8-11 p.m., free. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Parker Millsap. South on Main, 7:30 p.m., $13-$17.

1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain.com.

Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton.

Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

COMEDY

Stand-Up Tuesday. Hosted by Adam Hogg. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-

“The Art of Leadership: Lessons from the American Presidency.” A talk by Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Jon Meacham. Sturgis Hall, 4:30 p.m. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-6835200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

BENEFITS

“Oh, the Humanity!” Benefit. Proceeds go to Habitat of Central Arkansas. Raduno Brick Oven and Barroom, 6 p.m., $10. 1318 S. Main St. 501374-7476. www.radunolr.com/.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-6631196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

Drageoke with Chi Chi Valdez. Sway. 412 Louisiana.

Gil Franklin & Friends. Holiday Inn, North Little Rock, first Tuesday, Wednesday of every month. 120 W. Pershing Blvd., NLR. Jazz in the Park: Acoustix with Rod P. Riverfront Park, 6 p.m., free. 400 President Clinton Avenue.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Mark Currey. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 5:30 p.m. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-3798189. www.thirst-n-howl.com.

RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505.

The Storytellers Club Event. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m., donations. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

COMEDY

John Crist. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., $8. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www. loonybincomedy.com.

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

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MARCH 31, 2016

31

APRIL 8

300 Third Tower • 501-375-3333 coppergrillandgrocery.com Opening reception for HUGO & GAYNE PRELLER’S

House of Light

AFTER DARK, CONT.

THE 2ND FRIDAY OF EACH MONTH 5-8 PM

ART STUDIO

“Late Summer Afternoon“

By William McNamara

“Yertle the Turtle“

By Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss)

JOIN US APRIL, 8TH 5-8PM Featured Artist: William McNamara Group Show: The Literary Muse ♦ Fine Art ♦ Wine ♦ Hors d’oeuvres ♦

Pyramid Place • 2nd & Center St • (501) 801-0211

COMPLETE SPACES

Don’t miss it – lots of fun!

32

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

THEATER

“Driving Miss Daisy.” The Weekend Theater, through April 17: Fri., Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m., $16. 1001 W. 7th St. 501-374-3761. www. weekendtheater.org.

“Love That Dog.” Walton Arts Center, Sun., April 3, 2 p.m., $8. 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville.

479-443-5600.

“Rapture, Blister, Burn.” Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios, through April 24: Wed.Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Sat., 2 p.m., $15-$45. 505 W. Spring St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. theatre2.org.

NEW GALLERY EXHIBITS, EVENTS ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Dorothea Lange’s America” and “Industrial Beauty: Charles Burchfield’s ‘Black Iron,’ ” through May 8, film “Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning,” 2 p.m. April 3, lecture hall, free; “Miranda Young: A Printed Menagerie,” museum school gallery, through May 29; 46th annual “Mid-Southern Watercolorists Exhibition,” through April 17; “Admiration,” painting by William Adolph Bouguereau, through May 15; “Life and Light: “Nathalia Edenmont: Force of Nature,” photographs, through May 1. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000.

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: “Interconnections,” paintings and drawings by Maria and Jorge Villegas, April 1-June 30, reception 5:30-8 p.m. April 8, 2nd Friday Art Night. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-noon Fri. and Sun. 375-2342.

ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “Tea and ’Tiques,” meet and greet with purse designers Carolyn McDaniel and Nancy Steele, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. April 3 (with paid museum admission), “Caro Nan: The Women Behind the Baskets,” hand-painted basket purses from the 1960s to the early 1980s by Carolyn McDaniel and Nancy Steele, through May 1, $10, $8 for students, seniors and military; also “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Tue.-Sun. 916-9022.

L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Spring Flowers,” paintings by Louis Beck, drawing for free giclee 7 p.m. April 21; student art show 2-4 p.m. April 3. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006.

LAMAN PUBLIC LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St., NLR: “Abandoned Arkansas: An Echo from the Past,” photography by the Abandoned Arkansas photographers group, through April 19, reception 6-8 p.m. April 1. 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 758-1720.

LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA, 420 Main St.: Paintings by Susan Chambers, through April 9; talk by the artist noon April 2.

M2 GALLERY, Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center: “Manscape,” paintings by Charles Henry James, opening reception 6-9 p.m. April 1, show through April 29. 225-6257.

A DEMONSTRATION OF PRINTMAKING

These venues will be open late.

There’s plenty of parking and a FREE TROLLEY to each of the locations.

FREE TROLLEY RIDES!

ARTS

BEHIND THE INK

FEATURING THE SCULPTURES OF MARIANNE HENNIGAR AND THE JEWELRY OF CHRISTIE YOUNG 2200 RIVER MARKET AVE. STE 400 501.374.9247 WWW.ARCAPITAL.COM ROBERT BEAN, CURATOR R

1

LECTURES

Bernard Kinsey. A talk by the founder of the Kinsey Collection of African American Art and History. Sturgis Hall, noonm. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5200. clintonschool.uasys. edu.

Free parking at 3rd & Cumberland Free street parking all over downtown and behind the River Market (Paid parking available for modest fee.)

A PART OF PRINTMAKERS UNDER 30

Ride the ARKANSAS TIMES

BLUES BUS

APRIL 16, 2016

TO THE JUKE JOINT FESTIVAL IN CLARKSDALE, MS

IT'S ALL ABOUT

THE DELTA!

Enjoy small stages with authentic blues during the day and at night venture into the surviving juke joints, blues clubs and other indoor stages.

Reserve your seat by calling 501.375.2985 or emailing Kelly Lyles at kellylyles@arktimes.com BUS TRANSPORTATION PROVIDED BY ARROW COACH LINES

$125

PRICE INCLUDES: + + + + +

Round-trip bus transportation Live blues performances en route Adult beverages on board Lunch at a Delta favorite Wristband for the nighttime events

BUS LEAVES AT 9 A.M. FROM IN FRONT OF THE PARKING DECK AT 2ND & MAIN STREETS IN DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK AND RETURNS LATE NIGHT.

The Arkansas Times Blues Bus is a related event and not affiliated with Juke Joint Festival or the non-profit Clarksdale Downtown Development Association. www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2016

33

Dining

Information in our restaurant capsules reflects the opinions of the newspaper staff and its reviewers. The newspaper accepts no advertising or other considerations in exchange for reviews, which are conducted anonymously. We invite the opinions of readers who think we are in error.

B Breakfast L Lunch D Dinner $ Inexpensive (under $8/person) $$ Moderate ($8-$20/person) $$$ Expensive (over $20/person) CC Accepts credit cards

WHAT’S COOKIN’ REBEL KETTLE BREWING CO., the long in-development brewpub in East Little Rock, is now open at 822 E. Sixth St. It debuted 16 beers — four that will be available year-round (Working Class Hero Blonde Ale, C-Street IPA, Dirtbag Brown and Moontower Cream Stout), two seasonals and 10 rotating and specialty beers. The menu is pub grub — burgers, po’ boys, wings — with a Cajun influence.

Pat Beaird, formerly of The Southern Gourmasian, is heading the kitchen. Hours are 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday and 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Monday hours are likely down the road.

THREE SAMS BBQ, the Mabelvale barbecue joint known for its massive portions and peanut butter pie, was destroyed in a fire Monday. The restaurant, at 10508 Mann Road, was closed at the time and no one was injured.

ANDINA’S CAFE AND COFFEE ROASTERY, the longtime purveyor of Guatemalan coffee, pastries and sandwiches, first whet its beer whistle a couple of years ago when it began its Diamond Bear Brewing Co. firkin-tapping events, at which the craft brewery served beers aged with Andina’s coffees. At the last firkin-tapping, in January, owner Curtis Westbrook thought, Why not add a taproom to the roasting room? The TufNut Taproom, which opened a couple of weeks ago, serves Diamond Bear craft beers (including Trojan Triple, Hibernation, Pig Trail Porter, etc.) and a menu of brats, Polish sausages, hot dogs and what Westbrook says has been declared the best sandwich in the River Market district: fried bologna with peppered bacon, American cheese, his grandmother’s cole slaw, all slathered with Shack Barbecue sauce. (You can buy the Shack sauce there, too.) Andina’s hours are now 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

SPEAKING OF DIAMOND BEAR and collaborations, Rock Town Distillery has announced that it will collaborate with Diamond Bear to produce a single malt whiskey distilled from the North Little Rock brewery’s Pig Trail Porter. Rock Town says it will be the first single malt scotch produced in Arkansas since Prohibition.

AND SPEAKING OF FIRKINS, mark your calendar for the Arkansas Times Spring Firkin Fest on May 13 at the Argenta Farmers Market grounds. More details to follow.

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MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

GUARANTEED HIT: The hamburger steak at dinner is a favorite for every visit.

Down home goodness Not quite a slam dunk, Alley-Oops still hits the spot.

A

lley-Oops has always been a bit of an enigma to us. Is it a neighborhood bar? A fast casual dining restaurant? An upscale diner?

Its location, tucked into a strip mall alongside a salon and a gaming store popular with the “Warhammer 40K” crowd doesn’t provide many clues. Nor does the interior, with an airy, open dining area near the entrance and a bar area separated by a half-wall divider. Still, the restaurant seems to be a popular spot in West Little Rock, and with a consistent track record of fast, friendly service and decent food on our recent trips in, we can see why.

Appetizers (menu-spelled “Oopetizers”) at Alley-Oops are pretty standard. There are onion rings ($4.95), which the menu claims are

beer-battered, but seemed to us to be of the pre-made and frozen variety, along with other fried delights like fried cheese, fried mushrooms and french fries. On our second trip in, we decided to go for the cheese dip and chips ($3.95 small, $6.95 large), which consisted of a bowl of chips straight from the bag and a decent (if slightly bland) queso. Given the number of fried items on the app menu, it seems to us that Alley-Oops could at least do fresh-fried tortilla chips, a nice touch that would have made the whole dish a little more memorable.

Where the restaurant shines, though, is with its selection of great burgers. A basic cheeseburger ($5.75) came fully loaded with mustard, mayo, fresh tomato and lettuce, pickles and a

slice of cheddar cheese. It was a juicy, flavorful hamburger, cooked just like we wanted and served up piping hot.

Other burger options like the Bacon Blue Burger (which adds bacon and blue cheese) and the Three Alarm Burger (with jalapeños, chipotle mayo and pepper jack cheese) caught our attention on the menu — the basic burger was so tasty that we expect the specialty versions will be, too.

A return trip for dinner had us hungry for something a little more substantial, and given the success of our burger experience, we went for the hamburger steak ($10.95), a lean, juicy chopped steak smothered in sweet grilled onions and mushrooms. A side order of sauteed vegetables was a pleasant surprise, full of flavor and cooked until the broccoli had just a hint of char and the carrots were intensely sweet. Rounding out the meal was a side salad of mixed greens, cheese, bacon bits and fresh mushrooms — something that puzzled us greatly, since the mushrooms with our steak were of the canned variety.

Still, everything hit the spot nicely, and we’d order this dish again anytime.

At first glance, the fried catfish

BELLY UP

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MONEY’S WORTH: The Alley-Oops fried catfish plate.

QUICK BITE One of the quirks of Alley-Oops is the constant parade of desserts that get introduced like royalty to each table.

Take your pick of cakes, pies and other sweets — they’re generally worth a try.

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reasonably priced, down-home eating joint with a few fancy flourishes.

It’s one of the few options for decent Southern-style food in West Little Rock, and while it doesn’t stand out enough for us to make a special trip out to those environs, it’s certainly on our list of places to stop when we find ourselves on errands and in need of a bite. There are other items, like the taco salad, burrito plate and quesadillas that we are hungry to get back and try — and, of course, there’s always room for grilled onions and a hamburger steak.

✁

($12.95) plate seemed to be a little pricey to us, but once the plate arrived with a half-dozen crisp, delicious catfish fillets, we felt we had easily gotten our money’s worth. Each fillet was moist and firm in the center, cleantasting and fresh, while the golden batter on the outside gave every bite the satisfying crunch we crave from good catfish. Fried catfish is a dish that any restaurant in Arkansas should be able to pull off, although unfortunately, many can’t. Alley-Oops does a great job here, and loads up the portion to boot.

We took home a slice of Red Velvet Cake ($4.50) after our big meal, and although we tucked into it not long after we arrived home, perhaps the journey didn’t do it any good, because it was a little too dense for our liking, with a gummy texture that detracted from the overall flavor. We’ve heard great things about the desserts at Alley-Oops, and the peanut butter pie and rum cake that were being shown around alongside the red velvet looked good. We’re going to withhold judgment on this cake until such time as we can try it again fresh in the restaurant.

Overall, Alley-Oops stands as a

North Little Rock • 10840 Maumelle Blvd.

(501) 812-0095 • nashvillerockingrill.com *SOME RESTRICTIONS APPLY

✁

www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2016

35

MOVIE REVIEW

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS, CONT.

GENRE-DEFYING: Michael Shannon and Jaeden Lieberher star as a father and his sickly, but special, son.

Nichols on track His ‘Midnight Special’ subverts the superhero-industrial complex.

BY SAM EIFLING

M

aybe the only line in “Midnight Special” that clunks comes from the child at the center of the story. He’s with his dad (Michael Shannon) and a family friend (Joel Edgerton) on the run from … well, pretty much everybody: his former religious sect, the FBI, satellite surveillance.

The boy, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), reading a comic by flashlight in the back seat, pipes up to ask: “What’s Kryptonite?”

Given a couple of beats, the adults discuss how sheltered Alton has been, but at first it rings as an indulgent shot across the bow of, oh, maybe say, “Batman vs. Superman,” playing down the cineplex hall. The premise of “Midnight Special” holds that this little boy has some sort of extraordinary powers that allow him to do unfathomable things.

He can pull radio signals out of the air in real time, or pick up encrypted government transmissions, and he dabbles in some clumsy telekinesis. The allusion to Kal El is apt; it’s as if this kid fell to Earth from another planet, though far from being super, he’s sickly, struggling and in big trouble.

But rather than churn out a movie about ass-kickings and city-crushings, 36

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols infuses “Midnight Special” with suspense and heart that blossom into something that defies and transcends genre.

Throughout this stealthy sci-fi tour de force, he subverts the superhero-industrial complex to build a true-seeming fantasy full of wonder, faith, sacrifice and pathos. It’s as if someone rebooted an ’80s Spielberg flick as Southern noir, and crafted it without a hint of cynicism.

(Overheard in the theater after a recent screening: “That was like if ‘Tomorrowland’ had been a great movie.”)

Frankly, too, it should launch Nichols onto the short list for whatever next project Marvel needs to staff. Now four feature-length movies into his career, the Little Rock-born director has proved he has the chops to guide A-list talent in the pursuit of a genuine vision.

Adam Driver (lately of “Star Wars”) also appears, as a quietly funny straight-man NSA analyst, as does Kirsten Dunst (of “Spider-Man” flicks), as Alton’s harried mother. Twice now, here and in their mutual breakthrough “Take Shelter,” Nichols has gotten more out of a quietly relentless Michael Shannon than Zack Snyder did cranking Shannon up to 11

as Zod in the latest Superman flicks. No doubt Kevin Feige, the mastermind of Marvel’s ever-expanding cinematic universe, has penciled in Nichols’ name on whatever wish list of up-and-comers he’s vetting for “Captain Marvel” and “The Inhumans,” both due in 2019. For what it’s worth, too: As in “Mud,” his previous feature, Nichols proves here that he can direct child actors as well as anyone working.

These days superhero flicks tend to fail because they don’t know what to do with ambiguity, forgetting that most regular people, living regular-people lives, are awash in it — not knowing whether something’s right or wrong is such a natural state that it has become a second uncanny valley for storytellers to hurdle. The slow burn of “Midnight Special” as an extended road-trip getaway picture, hurtling toward a mysterious destination, gives the movie room to crack its knuckles, pour a drink and be exciting without being hubristic. What the hell does a father do, anyway, when his son seems like a cross between an interdimensional traveler, a prophet and an angel? Who knows whether it’s the right thing, but this miracle tween has in mind some coordinates a few states over, along with a very specific time, so you’d better get him there, come helicopters or high water. Even when the kid says everything’s going to be OK, there’s plenty of room for doubt. But that’s sort of the great thing about not knowing quite what to think — you have to navigate by feel. And “Midnight Special” lands squarely in the gut.

making this film have been far different? Instead, the state has financially encouraged a film that grossly misrepresents average Arkansans as a gaggle of bigots (the crowds trying to shout down Christians during the trial) or conniving secularists (anyone involved in the school district and the ACLU), with only a smattering of pure-hearted souls among them all. And yes, even though the setting of the plot is never specified in the movie, the Arkansas flag is quite visible in the background of the courtroom scenes — which fact renders obscenely ridiculous one of the subplots of the movie. In his last film appearance, former U.S. Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson, credited only as “senior pastor,” warns a small gathering of local ministers that the local prosecuting attorney has issued a subpoena for the written text of all their sermons from the last 120 days, apparently to review them for objectionable content. Who knew that, in our state, subpoenas could be issued outside of the discovery phase of a trial?

“The pressure we’re feeling today will mean persecution tomorrow,” says that same senior pastor. However, if there is a conspiracy to silence the free expression of Christians, or to prevent any discussion of religion from occurring in the classroom, “God’s Not Dead 2” fails to make that case. By representing a set of circumstances so far removed from reality, and in a manner so devoid of craft, it makes a laughingstock of any such claims of persecution. Instead, the fear that seems to underlie this film (and the previous one) is the loss of hegemony, the simple fact that religious claims are no longer privileged, immune from confrontation or refutation, but are subject to analysis and criticism from science, philosophy, history and law.

“God’s Not Dead 2” does not answer the challenge offered to religion by the modern world — rather, it just tries to render those challenges as irrational, devoid of substance. By presenting the world in such a villainous light, it does a complete disservice to its intended audience, whose only tool for facing this cognitive dissonance is uttering the magic g-word and then claiming victimhood. They could have called this movie “The God Monologues” as a fairly accurate description of the plot, but honestly, the title would not have been appropriate, for nothing presented on screen actually empowers those people watching it.

FRIDAY, MAY 20 | 6-9 P.M. at the ARGENTA PLAZA

WINE

RAIN OR SHINE

FOOD

JA Z Z

CATERED BY

for a

TASTE OVER 300 WINES

SPRING EVENING

5 tents serving wines from all over the world.

with

THE FUNKANITES w/ DJ Set by Joshua Asante of Amasa Hines & Velvet Kente

Make plans to attend this enjoyable spring evening event celebrating Wine, Food & Jazz in the beautiful Argenta Arts District.

Go To:

Purchase tickets early: $30, $40 at the door

http://bit.ly/grape16

for tickets!

Print your tickets and present at the door.

www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2016

37

CELEBRATE LAUGH WOW TASTE RELAX DINE PLAY

2 ^ 7

Âż a Â?

WOW TASTE RELAX LAUGH ENJOY 38

MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

APRIL LINEUP POP’S LOUNGE Thursday - Saturday | - p.m.

$

7 2 Â?

' ' 7 $

SILKS BAR & GRILL Friday & Saturday | p.m. - a.m.

1 2 8 9 15 16 22 23 29 30

Shari Bales Band Shari Bales Band Moxie Moxie Ghost Town Blues Band Ghost Town Blues Band John Calvin Brewer John Calvin Brewer The Christine Demeo Band The Christine Demeo Band

JOIN US FOR THE

EVERY THURSDAY | -

AND JOIN US FOR KARAOKE AND 1/2 PRICE DRINKS 7-11 P.M. EVERY WEDNESDAY IN POP’S LOUNGE!

ARKANSAS’ FAVORITE

PLACE TO PLAY Gambling problem? Call - - - .

HOT SPRINGS HAPPENINGS APRIL

Hot Tickets in Hot Springs For a complete calendar of events, visit hotsprings.org.

APRIL 1ST

Christine Demeo & Cassie Ford, Pop’s Lounge 5-8p.m.

APRIL 1ST&2ND

Shari Bales Band, Silk’s Bar and Grill 10p.m.–2a.m.

APRIL 2ND

Oaklawn Arkansas Baggo Championship.

Join us for the $3,000 Spa City Baggo Classic.

APRIL 6TH

Spa City Blues Society Blues Jam at the Big Chill

APRIL 8TH

Susan Erwin, Pop’s Lounge 5-9 p.m.

Moxie, Infield 11a.m.-5 p.m.

Moxie, Silk’s Bar and Grill 10p.m.-2 a.m.

Adams and Ben Carey. General admission is $15. Reserved seating is $20.

APRIL 9TH-APRIL 16TH

APRIL 9TH

Magic Springs Opens for the Season Magic Springs Water and Theme Park

Racing Festival of the South. Come enjoy one of the most exciting weeks of racing in the country featuring nine stakes races, culminating with the $1 million Arkansas Derby.

APRIL 9TH 7:30 P.M

APRIL 14TH

.

Fun City Chorus Present Road to Nashville Woodlands Auditorium 1101 DeSoto Blvd.

A musical tribute to the music of Nashville featuring The Fun City Chorus, Trey Stevens & The Lazy Desperados, Clyde

and clarinet with Shirley Chauvin as emcee and on vocals, Clyde Pound on keyboard, David Higginbotham on bass and Bill Huntington on drums. Complimentary light snacks and a cash bar. Tickets are $15 or $10 for Jazz Society Members. For more information, call 501-627-2425 or visit HSJazzSociety.org.

Susan Erwin, Pop’s Lounge 5-9 p.m.

APRIL 15TH 6-8 P.M.

Arkansas Jazz Experience Third Fri. of the month, Apr. through Aug. Whittington Place, 301 Whittington Ave. Featuring Earl Hesse on saxophone

ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND TOURISM

TEE OFF TO A RELAXING WEEKEND AT THE ARLINGTON!

APRIL, ALL MONTH LONG

Tulip Extravaganza, Garvan Woodland Gardens. Free for members, $15 for adults, $5 for children

Our Golf package includes: • Two nights stay in a Standard Room for two adults • Electric cart and green fees for one 18-hole round per person at the Hot Springs Country Club (Arlington or Park course) • Breakfast each morning in the Dining Room

$394 PLUS TAX

www.ArlingtonHotel.com For Reservations: (800) 643-1502 239 Central Ave. | Hot Springs, AR 71901 ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com MARCH 31, 2016 39 www.arktimes.com MARCH 31, 2016 39

APRIL 15-16TH

Arkansas Derby Day

food, music, artisans, a kid zone, local farmers, landscaping and gardening.

Sad Daddy will take the main stage at 4 p.m. The festival will kick off on Friday, April 22 with an exclusive dining experience under the stars by the chefs of Next Level Kitchens. Tickets are available at HSVTicketSales.com

APRIL 20TH

APRIL 29-30TH

Moxie, Infield 11a.m.-5p.m.

Susan Erwin, Pop’s Lounge 5-9p.m.

Ghost Town Blues Band, Silks Bar and Grill 10p.m.– 2 a.m.

APRIL 16TH

Spa City Blues Society Jam at the Big Chil

APRIL 22ND, 7 P.M.

Bank of the Ozarks Arena The Inaugural Buffalo Days Festival in April will open with nationally syndicated radio host Bobby Bones (a Hot Springs native) will appear live and in concert with his Raging Idiots for one night only at the Bank of the Ozarks Arena. Special guests include Uncle Kracker, Lauren Alaina, Mo Pitney and Barrett Baber. Tickets are $25 for general admission or $50 for VIP meet and greet.

For tickets, visit ticketmaster.com or call OPEN this FRIDAY, April 1st

www.hotelhotspringsandspa.com

APRIL 23RD

The festival moves to Baxter Plaza, behind the Bank of the Ozarks Arena, for more entertainment and good food.

APRIL 23RD, 11 A.M.-6 P.M.

Dig In! Farm-to-Table Festival and Outdoor Expo Grove Park - 1105 DeSoto Boulevard Join us for an entire Saturday of free

Susan Erwin, Pop’s Lounge 5 p.m. – 9 p.m.

The Christine Demeo Band, Silks Bar and Grill 10 p.m. – 2 a.m.

APRIL 29TH-MAY 8TH

2nd Annual Arts and the Park This 10-day celebration features artistic disciplines of every genre. We hope that you will sample a wide variety of their fantastic events. The enthusiastic participation of many of Hot Springs talented individuals and organizations is evident of the Hot Springs Cultural Alliance’s effort to carry out their mission, and also bring art lovers from all over to experience the beauty of Hot Springs.

Various Venues throughout Hot Springs

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ARKANSAS TIMES

bike

40 40

LOCAL

MARCH 31, 2016 MARCH 31, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES ARKANSAS TIMES

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT

APRIL 2ND

Dawn at Oaklawn presented by Westrock Coffee 7:30-8:30a.m.

Moxie, Infield 1-5p.m.

Susan Erwin, Pop’s Lounge 5-9 p.m.

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Hot Springs That’s the kind of history made in Hot Springs every day.

APRIL 21-23RD

18th Annual Hot Springs Corvette Weekend There will be Corvettes of all ages; Show Competition will be inside the Bank of the Ozarks Arena. Public is welcome Free Admission. Hours April 23rd 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Hot Springs Convention Center

Silk’s Bar and Grill

APRIL 22-23RD

Susan Erwin, Pop’s Lounge 5p.m.– 9p.m.

John Calvin Brewer Band, Silks Bar and Grill 10p.m.-2a.m.

HotSprings.org • 1-888-SPA-CITY

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com MARCH 31, 2016 41 www.arktimes.com MARCH 31, 2016 41

ADVERTISEMENT

A R O R A P R ESENTS

CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER  1200 President Clinton Ave.

A HERO REMEMBERED: THE IMPACT OF A GIFT OF LIFE. AUDIE WADE WAS A LIFE SAVER. The husband and father of two, who loved a good game of softball, wasn’t a surgeon. He didn’t race into burning buildings to pull out crying babies. But his family still regards him as a hero. His daughter, Audra LaRue, recalls fond memories of her dad. “He was there, even if you didn’t want him to be,” she said. That everpresent figure lives on—before dying in 2009, Audie donated his organs.

Audie and his wife, Bettye, relished in being grandparents and active members of the community. He was a role model to young athletes as a softball coach and umpire.

“When he died I heard from so many adults he

coached as kids about the impact he made on their lives,” said Audra. Audie also affected lives away from the ball field. On his way home from a fishing trip, he witnessed a truck spin out of control before going over a bridge and landing in a creek. Audie sprang into action, saving two of the three passengers. Audra said her dad “saved people while living and in death.”

Audie passed away on May 17, 2009, at age 64. Audie wasn’t registered as an organ donor, and it wasn’t anything his family considered.

During this difficult time the Wade family met Drew Toler. Drew was the Family Services Manager for the Arkansas Regional Organ Recovery Agency (ARORA). He counseled the family—helping

to ease their apprehension about the donation process. They experienced firsthand the “honesty, compassion and genuine concern” of ARORA’s staff. Audie’s kidneys saved two lives. Audra said the decision wasn’t easy, but she “hasn’t regretted it for even one millisecond.”

Audra now works with Drew, providing families with the comfort and information that helped her family. She shares her father’s story because organ donation is “the right thing to do.”

Arkansans like the Wade family will be celebrated during ARORA’s second annual Function at the Junction Bridge Party and Fun Walk from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27 at the Clinton Presidential Center.

Live Music by

D.J. WILLIAmS KARK 4 Today

mALLORy BROOKS KARK 4 Today

Despite widespread support for organ donation, a severe shortage in the number Mariachi of organs donated still exists: More than & AmericA 121,000 Americans are on a waiting list for a kidney, heart, liver or other vital organs; another person is added to the waiting list every 10 minutes; and an average of 21 individuals will die each day while waiting for an available organ.

Registering as an organ and tissue donor is easy. Arkansas’ online donor registry is available at Donatelifearkansas.org.

Thank you to our media partners:

KARK 4 TODAY PERSONALITIES MALLORY BROOKS AND D.J. WILLIAMS, along with the D.J.’s dog Shade, will serve as emcees for the Bridge Party, which is free and open to the public.

The event will feature live music by Mayday by Midnight and Mariachi America, free refreshments and plenty of giveaways. A variety of food trucks will sell signature blue and green dishes inspired by the occasion. ARORA staff will be available to answer questions and assist with on-site donor registration.

ARKANSAS’S SOURCE FOR NEWS, POLITICS AND ENTERTAINMENT

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ARKANSAS TIMES

stylesheet

Cooking Eco-style

by

APRIL EDITION

Go Green A

KREBS always has the best gadgets and items for cooking and that’s no different when it comes to finding eco-friendly products as well. From cutting boards, to serveware to pans and more, there’s something in store for those wanting to embrace an environmentally responsible lifestyle in the kitchen.

Chic and modern cutting boards made from recycled materials

pril brings Earth Day so for this month we feature environmentally

friendly products to help you green up your lifestyle. These days you

can find eco items for a range of things. On these pages, check out how you can bring some green (big or small) into your homes and more.

Eco smart poly-flax everyday serving bowl, 3 qt.

Where to Buy it BELLA VITA JEWELRY Inside the Lafayette Building 523 S. Louisiana St., Ste. 175 479.200.1824 bellavitajewelry.net

Environmentally Friendly Outdoors

You know the saying that “milk does a body good”, well it also does good for the earth too! We are in love with this table made from recycled milk jugs that we saw at KEN RASH’S. We’re partial to the green color but it’s also available in a variety of other colors so head over to pick out your favorite one.

THE GREEN CORNER STORE 1423 Main St. 374.1111 thegreencornerstore.com KEN RASH’S ARKANSAS 11220 N. Rodney Parham, Ste. 14 663.1818 kenrashoutdoorfurniture.com KREBS BROTHERS RESTAURANT STORE 4310 Landers Rd., NLR 687.1331 krebsbrothers.com MADDOX 419 Main St., NLR 313.4242 shopmaddoxonline.com

“Soy” Good for the Environment…

Minty Fresh

We had to bring a little fashion into the mix so in keeping with the theme we found this mint green “Erica” boyfriend blazer at MADDOX, the stylish clothier for women of all shapes and sizes. The color makes it fresh for spring and it’s also available in coral. Shop all of Maddox’s affordable and stylish products in store or online.

You know BELLA VITA JEWELRY is known for handmade jewelry, accessories and other local artisan goodies. On a recent visit we found these clean burning soy wax candles. They’re not only beautiful, but smell amazing and are good for the environment to boot. Hand poured in small batches, they’re made with all natural essential oils and fragrances and come in re-usable glass. *Soy wax burns clean unlike petroleum wax, so it won’t leave soot or carcinogens in the air. For the best result, allow the wax to form a puddle before extinguishing flame. Trim the wick to about 1/4” before every burn.

THE SOUTHERN FOX 304 Main St., NLR 375.DESK (3375) TANGLEWOOD DRUG STORE 6815 Cantrell Rd. 664.4444 tanglewooddrug.com

ENGRAVED SCRIPTURE BRACELETS AVAILABLE 304 MAIN ST. • ARGENTA ART DISTRICT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/THESOUTHERNFOXNLR ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2015 MARCH 31, 2016

43 43

Spring is here, and in Arkansas it also

means the beginning of a potentially deadly tornado season. As we’ve seen over the years, tornadoes can hit anywhere at any time, causing damage to homes, businesses and schools and even devastating loss of life. When it comes to tornadoes, the best defense is being prepared. In this special Arkansas Times section, we’ll give you some handy information what to do during a tornado to help minimize damage and injury. Tornado season is coming – are you ready?

Good Gardening

You won’t need a green thumb with these ready to grow cans. They’re the fun and easy way to harvest organic herbs right from your windowsill – just plant, water and grow! Found at THE GREEN CORNER STORE, they’re available in basil, cilantro, sage and dill.

What to do during a tornado

Re-cycled & Re-purposed

Support the Environment and Can The Grease©

Grease and oil build up is responsible for 70-80% of dry weather overflows. Our Can the Grease© program offers a solution to the non-capacity overflow problem. Apply for your FREE Can The Grease Starter Kit online at WWW.LRWU.COM/CTG

What constitutes going green more than recycling and repurposing items for our cute little feathery friends? Roger Allred creates these super cool & funky birdhouses with recycled wood, pots, pans, spoons and more. These make great gifts for Mother’s Day or great décor for your outdoor area as you gear up for spring. Hop into The SOUTHERN FOX to find more items like jewelry, clothing, accessories, jams and more.

➥ If you are in a structure (e.g. residence, small building, school, nursing home, hospital, factory, shopping center, high-rise building): Go at once to the basement, storm cellar or the lowest level of the building If there is no basement, go to an inner hallway or smaller inner room without windows, such as a bathroom or closet.

Get away from windows.

Save Gas. Go Green.

Carpooling and delivery services help cut down pollutants.

Prescriptions are always necessary so take advantage of TANGLEWOOD DRUG STORE’S Doorstep Delivery as a way to get green, save time and gas as well.

Go to the center of the room. Stay away from corners, as they tend to attract debris.

Get under a sturdy piece of furniture such as a work bench or heavy table or desk and hold on to it.

Avoid places with wide-span roofs such as auditoriums, cafeterias, large hallways, or shopping malls.

Use your arms to protect your head and neck ➥ If you are in a mobile home: When a tornado warning is issued, take shelter in a building with a strong foundation. Or, if one is not available, lie in a ditch or low-lying area a safe distance away from the mobile home. ➥ If you are outdoors: If possible get inside a sturdy building with a concrete foundation.

Naturally Beautiful

Arkansas is full of beauty. Naturally, that means there’s no room left for trash. You can help keep The Natural State clean and green! Dispose of your trash properly everyday, and this spring, volunteer in a local Great American Cleanup event. Find a community cleanup near you at KEEPARKANSASBEAUTIFUL.COM.

SECONDS SAVE LIVES! BE SMART ABOUT SAFETY No one plans to call 9-1-1, but now you can plan ahead.

Before an emergency, give 9-1-1 and emergency responders valuable information that will only be available when you call 9-1-1.

CREATE YOUR FAMILY’S SAFETY PROFILE NOW. 44 44

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If shelter is not available, or there is no time to get indoors, lie in a ditch or low-lying area or crouch near a strong building.

Be aware of the potential for flooding. ➥ If you are in a car: NEVER TRY TO OUTRUN A TORNADO IN YOUR CAR OR TRUCK! Get out of the car and take shelter in a nearby building.

SIGN UP TODAY

It’s free, private and secure. www.Smart911.com

If there is no time to get indoors, get out of the car and lie in a ditch or low-lying area away from the vehicle.

Again, be aware of the potential for flooding.

From The Community. For The Community.

CLOTHIER FOR WOMEN Sizes Small - 3XL. Affordable | Stylish | Great Customer Service.

MADDOX

419 Main Street, Argenta | (501) 313-4242 www.ShopMaddoxOnline.com

DELIVERY AVAILABLE COMPETITIVE PRICES GOOD NEIGHBOR PHARMACY MOST INSURANCE ACCEPTED GIFTS • GREETING CARDS VITAMINS & HERBAL PRODUCTS VACCINATIONS AVAILABLE

DRUG STORE

(501) 664-4444 6815 Cantrell Rd. Located Next to Stein Mart

TanglewoodDrug.com

Life begins Outdoors.

Your source for local, healthy and earthfriendly living.

Spring sale now in progress!

There’s something for everyone in the family.

Huge selection of outdoor furniture on sale!

Ready for immediate delivery!

Come see our 10,000 Sq. Ft. Showroom 11220 N. Rodney Parham • Ste 14 • Little Rock • 501.663.1818 kenrashsoutdoorfurniture.com

• Food • T-Shirts • Personal Care • Dog Treats • Handcrafted Cards • Jewelry, Gifts and More

1423 Main Street, Suite D · Little Rock (501) 374-1111 · thegreencornerstore.com

We’re encouraging environmentally friendly lodging and dining establishments across the state to keep Arkansas natural and beautiful, inside and out. Many Arkansas businesses are committed to green efforts that are good for the

Make every day (and night) Earth Day

environment and for business.

More and more travelers are making green choices around The Natural State.

To help attract them, download materials at GreenTravelArkansas.com to promote your location’s sustainable practices.

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Diamond Chef Arkansas Recut: Find out who will make the final cut.

P

ulaski Technical College Foundation’s annual Diamond Chef Arkansas Competition is back this year with a new name, a new format, and new culinary experience - all taking place on April 21.

The fast-paced culinary competition brings together six of central Arkansas’ finest chefs who are competing in a one-night-only battle for the title of Diamond Chef Arkansas 2016. This year’s chefs are Bonner Cameron, executive chef for Bistro Catering & Gourmet Take Away; Philippe Ducrot, instructor at PTC Culinary Arts

and Hospitality Management Institute; Donnie Ferneau, executive chef at The 1836 Club; Jason Knapp, executive chef at Sysco Arkansas; Angela Nix, executive chef at The Quarter Café; and Justin Patterson, executive chef at Southern Gourmasian.

nary students and faculty. Themed food stations will offer a bit of sweet and a bit of savory. Attendees will enjoy Cuisines of the South, the World of Confectioneries, The Foundation of French, and Latin Fusion. Beverages and wine parings will be available at each food station, plus attendees can try specialty cocktails in the college’s mixology lab.

Instead of a silent auction, this year’s event will offer a Bon Appétit Bag Pull where attendees can purchase chances to win culinary experiences or merchandise. Guests also will enjoy plating and knife skills demonstrations, micro-brewed beer tastings, towel origami contests and the always popular wine pull.

The presenting sponsors for Diamond Chef Arkansas: Recut are Arkansas Beef Council, Sysco Arkansas and U.S. Foods.

Diamond Chef Arkansas, now in its ninth year, is Pulaski Technical College Foundation’s signature fundraising event. Proceeds from the event benefit PTC students and programs.

While the chefs are competing, attendees will enjoy heavy hors d’ oeuvres prepared by Pulaski Tech culi-

For more information and tickets, visit: pulaskitech.edu/diamondchef.

Master Chef Sponsors

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Pulaski Technical College Foundation’s Diamond Chef Arkansas: Recut April 21, 2016 / 6-9 p.m.

Pulaski Technical College Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute, 13000 Interstate 30, Little Rock Tickets are $125/ person. For reservations and more information, www.pulaskitech.edu/ DiamondChef

Can ihelp you?

Learn to get the most from your Apple products at home or your office.

• Show how to build and maintain your own websites and social media.

• Guide you to the perfect Mac or device for your needs and budget.

• Everything Apple: Macs, iPads, iPhones, Apple TV and Apple Watch

• Data Recovery & troubleshooting • Hardware & software installations • Computer upgrades • Organize and backup all your documents, photos, music, movies and email on all your devices with iCloud.

Follow @MovingtoMac on Twitter and Like Moving to Mac Facebook for news and deals.

Call Cindy Greene Satisfaction Always Guaranteed

MOVING TO MAC

www.movingtomac.com

cindy@movingtomac.com • 501-681-5855

PUBLIC REVIEW AND COMMENT Rock Region METRO (METRO) invites the public to review and submit comments on the proposed Program of Projects (POP) for the FY16 Section 5307 Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grant funds. METRO has been awarded $4,663,774 in FTA FY16 Section 5307 funds.

The proposed POP may be viewed online at https://rrmetro.org/about/learn-more/facts/.

A physical copy of the POP can be obtained at the River Cities Travel Center (RCTC) in downtown Little Rock. A Spanish version of the POP is also available online and at the RCTC. The public comment period is from Thursday, March 31, 2016 through the close of business on Wednesday, April 6, 2016.

Please submit your comments or request a public hearing by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 6, 2016 via email (javery@rrmetro.org). The public may also submit written comments to Accounting Manager, METRO, 901 Maple St., North Little Rock, AR 72114. If there are no comments or requests for a public hearing, this proposed Program of Projects will become the final Program of Projects, unless amended.

HOUSE CLEANING SERVICES. EXPERIENCE A CLEAN AND REFRESHING HOME.

ARKANSAS TIMES

MARKETPLACE TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985

ARKANSAS TIMES

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LOCAL

PROGRAM SUPERVISOR (ENGINEER)

Leads project teams for LRW Engineering Department in all phases of capital improvement projects involving facilities and conveyance. Duties & responsibilities include: project planning, budgeting, cost estimating, plan and spec developing, bidding, construction administration, and project performance. Will lead teams of in-house staff, consultants, and construction contractors.

DEADLINE TO APPLY IS APRIL 8.

WWW.LRWU.COM Equal Opportunity Employer

City of Little Rock

CAREER FAIR

We offer Daily, Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Monthly, One Time, Choose what works best for you.

Our staff is friendly, professional and responsible.

Saturday, April 2 • 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Statehouse Convention Center

Visit with City of Little Rock representatives from: April 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 2016 Fri & Sat 7:30pm, Sun 2:30pm $16 Adults • $12 Students & Seniors Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama For more information contact us at 501.374.3761 or www.weekendtheater.org

For a free quote call

(501) 749-4222

There’s never any obligation

1001 W. 7th St., LR, AR 72201 On the corner of 7th and Chester, across from Vino’s.

Support for TWT is provided, in part, by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the DAH, and the NEA.

Join our City family & receive these benefits: • Competitive Compensation • Paid Health, Dental & Vision Insurance • Nine Paid Holidays • Great Retirement System

- Police Department - Fire Department - Parks & Recreation - Little Rock Zoo - Public Works - & all other departments

View all job opportunities & apply online at lrjobs.net

EOE

www.arktimes.com

MARCH 31, 2016

47

CRANK IT UP AT

Bon Qui Qui with Crew 1 Group Presented by Anjelah Johnson Saturday, April 23 | SOLD OUT

Bill Engvall

Saturday, May 7 | SOLD OUT

CENTERSTAGE

Tickets available ChoctawCasinos.com, Ticketmaster.com or charge-by-phone at 800.745.3000.

LIVE AT GILLEY’S SHOWS START AT 10PM

THE STARS

ASPHALT COWBOYS

AARON WOODS

WESLEY MICHAEL HAYES

SHOTGUN BILLYS

TRAGIKLY WHITE

BO PHILIPS BAND

LARRY B. & THE CRADLE ROCKERS

CHRIS RIVERS BAND

OCTANE BLUE

FRIDAY, APRIL 1

SATURDAY, APRIL 2 FRIDAY, APRIL 8

SATURDAY, APRIL 9

FRIDAY, APRIL 15

SATURDAY, APRIL 16

FRIDAY, APRIL 29

SATURDAY, APRIL 30

FRIDAY, APRIL 22

SATURDAY, APRIL 23

800.590.LUCK (5825) | 3400 Choctaw Road, Pocola, OK 74902 Minutes from Fort Smith, AR | I-540, Exit 14 Management reserves all rights. Subject to change.

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